Arclight
by Vegetius
Summary: "I will take her from you. You know I will." He started toward us. I threw a hand out. Then I threw everything I had into crushing that man into bloody pulp. And ... ... Nothing happened. The man was immune to psychokinesis. Impossible. But he continued to be so right up until he flicked that black, folding blade back out to full length and drove it right through my stomach.
1. Prologue

My hand yanked a head up out of the water.

"What . . .?"

The rest of a body erupted back out into the world in a violent rush. Rancid water crashed down from its face, plastered black with slime, sludge, and the grime in its scalp. It gasped out loud like some half-drowned corpse, gagging on the thick air. There was too much of it from the sounds it made, and not enough. The whole thing shook with the shock of that sudden life.

It was a girl.

I let her go. I pulled my hand back from the slimy, ragged mass of her tangled hair, and couldn't help wincing as I smeared it against the side of my dirty field jacket. She pitched forward back toward the murky water, but caught herself just before falling in again.

"What the hell is it, Brennan?"

Someone else was edging up behind me, but I ignored that harsh whisper for a moment, just staring. The girl was choking up her lungs there in the grass and reeds. I could still barely make her out in the dark. She ignored me too.

The other growled loudly in his throat, and started trudging his way toward me at the river shallows' edge. He opened his mouth to say something more - but caught himself up instantly at the sight of that woman in the mud.

"God, is that ...?" he trailed off, almost too quiet to hear.

We stared at the woman. She stared down into the black water. I imagined that night had come on some time ago - what passed for it in that interminable dark - and silence hung all too thick in the heavy air. The woman started laughing - low, and quiet.

"Brennan! Liam! Goddamnit, we need to keep moving!"

One of the others was hissing at us from back through the reeds towards the treeline. Two more lingered in that one's wake, shifting uneasily there in the dark. Not another living thing to make a sound around for kilometers. No birds. No crickets. Not even croaking frogs along the river.

Still, so alien.

"Let's go!"

Liam was digging his fingers into my arm. I glanced back at him. Then again, down at the girl. She had managed to keep her face just out of the water long enough to remember how to breathe without it in her lungs.

"What about her?" I gestured down.

Liam didn't even look at the woman. He just started pulling me away.

"Forget about her!" he snarled. "We have to keep moving!"

"Hey, you two better move goddamnit!"

I just shook myself roughly free of Liam's clutching hand, though, and dropped back down into the stagnant water beside the girl.

"Get up," I told her, pulling her up anyways by the shoulders. She didn't resist, and I shoved her back onto shore, sloshing too loudly through the water.

"I don't care who you are, but you're coming with us," I tried to chastise her, but felt hollow even at that. It was hard to get out of my head just how dead she had looked when I had found her floating in the dank waters.

"It's not safe."

Liam had already spun back away toward the others. They were moving. Hurried footsteps creaked through the dead forest anew, and I prodded that comatose girl, stumbling along, as quickly as I could.

The undergrowth should have been thick, but was not. Not with that black decay that hung over everything so thick instead. I all but dragged my feet so the girl could keep pace, though I had a firm hand on her back pushing her headlong forward. She barely seemed aware at all, muddling on like the corpse I was almost sure that she had been. Maybe it wasn't just my imagination. She was mumbling a little to herself.

One of the others - Shawn - glanced back just long enough to get a look at what had kept us.

"You've gotta be kidding me."

He opened his mouth to say something more. But Evetts up front stopped us all with a warning hand.

"Hold up," Dustan repeated just barely loud enough for the res tof us to hear. He made a subtle gesture, almost invisible in the dark. And we paused.

Silence.

I held my breath. The girl didn't. Liam had his eyes darting every which way. Not that it would have done us a whole lot of good in the dark. I left it up to my ears. Shawn had a hand buried beneath his coat, staring.

More silence.

"Do you see anything?"

The girl was still muttering.

"Shut the fuck up!"

"There."

Liam pointed. Shawn spun around that way, hand still inside his coat. So did the others. I squinted after them.

"Over there."

We were all still. Staring.

Silence.

Shawn had started, slowly, to pull that hand free.

Then something whispered in my ear.

Shawn came whipping back around with his hand out and pointed away behind. Light flared ahead of his fingers. It exploded out, bursting into the trees. Then it turned to fire.

Whatever was there, it scattered into smoke, and vanished just as quickly as the burst of light. A chunk of bark was torn away and smoldering, glimmering in the gloom. It was hard to tell if that was what made that sudden hissing noise.

We were all quiet again after that for some time.

"Did you get it?" someone finally breathed.

And then that hissing finally stopped. The embers died out.

"Get ... _what_?" Shawn muttered back uselessly.

And the clicking started.

"Run."

Someone said it. I wasn't sure who. But Liam was already moving.

I didn't waste a second trying to prod that catatonic girl - I just caught her by the arm and under one leg and slung her across my back. Shawn started backpedaling slowly, picking up speed as he came back around, still staring off. Dustan and Evetts had the lead on him by several seconds.

We all took off into the forest. Away from that clicking.

Branches scratched at my face as I ran. I threw one hand out for balance, as much to ward them away as to keep from running headlong into a tree as I lumbered along with my own breath rattling in my ears. The others were shouting elsewhere, close by. Dirt and brush kicked up everywhere loudly, all hope for silence and hiding shattered in an instant. It didn't matter anymore now that the big ones had found us.

The clicking was bad. But the whispers were worse.

Much worse.

Dead leaves and pine needles cracked underfoot. The air was damp, and sticking. A fog lingered somewhere ahead. I could feel himself run right into it. Someone shouted something about that, but I couldn't hear over the sound of blood thumping in my veins.

The voices came through. At least, we had thought they were voices. Whatever they were saying, it was beyond me - low, and insidious, deep in the base of the skull. They made it hard to concentrate. Thankfully, there was only one thing any of us could think to do.

Run.

But it got closer, just like before. And there weren't so much of us left now.

I started to flag, and a surge of desperation at that drove me just a little bit harder. The girl was weighing down like deadweight and fire on my back, but I didn't drop her just yet. I plodded on a few dozen more desperate steps and . . .

Came up short.

Dustan nearly blew a hole right through my head. The man had his firebolt aimed right at the space between the trees where I came stumbling leadenly through. As it was, I just managed to duck aside. The blast slipped clean past the girl as well, lighting up one of those dead, crooked trees and burning a fiery hole into the night behind.

I didn't even have the breath to shout at the man. As it was, Liam snatched one of my arms and hauled me back up to my feet and into their little circle.

Each of the other four had his own weapon in hand, whatever they had had left pointed haphazardly off into the still, dark forest. The whispering was catching up. So was the clicking. Nothing else moved.

"Come on, Brennan!" Liam snapped at me as he pulled me up toward a broken tree at their center. "Move your ass, god damnit!"

The others pulled back around us, still aiming away. There was the brief thought in my head that they should never have stopped moving. Even for me.

But then it was gone.

Still - one of them didn't quite make it.

Evetts spared me two and the girl one glance back over his shoulder. He opened his mouth to say something, but never got it out. The sound caught in his throat instead, like he was gagging on his own tongue. Liam blinked at him, unregistering. Then something punched right up out Evett's back through the chest.

I don't think Liam saw what it was, and neither did Evetts. We never had before. The dead man just slowly came back around, his pale face painted incredulous. His whole body flew away into the night.

Liam started firing wildly after. So did Dustan. Shawn held back, poised and watching.

I caught that dead tree ahead in one hand without Liam's help, and pulled myself up onto the mound. The other man was roaring, bellowing out after Evetts into the night. I finally managed to slip the girl around and dropped her down to the ground. She rolled back against the blackened bark, still just as dazed and clueless.

"Hey!" I tried to slap her on the side of the face a few times. That seemed to bring a bit of sense back into her. The others were firing desperately into the black wood behind. I pulled out my own beaten-up little handcannon, and cocked the chamber open, peeking inside. Still some juice left.

The girl managed to blink up at me as I slapped the round back home.

"Who are you?"

I ignored her. "Just ... Stay here!" I grunted through my teeth, pocketing the last few rounds I had left and pressing a firm hand down hard on her shoulder. I scurried back up around the trunk of the tree before I could say anything else, and glanced around back to the others.

"Over here!" both Liam and Dustan were shouting at the same time from opposite sides of that small clearing drowned in dark all around. The fog had crept in, and they were firing blindly into the shadows and mist. Shawn was behind and between them, aiming from first one, then the other, then anywhere else in between.

Something caught Dustan's leg. He cried out, and it came off at the knee. The pitch went shrill as he started to topple, shots going wide. Two holes appeared in stomach and chest, and he lost an arm. Whatever was left of him pitched into the dirt, twitching. Then it was snatched away.

I could hear that fresh corpse scraping suddenly against the dirt even if I couldn't see it. Liam and Shawn were both firing now, right where Dustan had been. Something shrieked in response, but it was hard to tell if they had actually hit. So they just kept on shooting.

I joined in, adding a shout with the sudden whoomp of my cannon along with Liam's for good measure. The other man was howling like mad now and thrusting his rifle that way like he might stab it right through whatever it was that had taken Evetts and Dustan. It was the only reason I knew when it had gotten him too. That bellowing roar suddenly cut short.

Liam's head was gone. Even with all that light flashing around the forest like lightning in the dark, I couldn't see just how it had happened. The body kept firing, though, finger twitching sporadically and arm swinging wide. It came up toward me back up the mound, and I leapt into the dirt just as a bit of fire and light clipped my shoulder. As it was, the tree behind me with the girl nearly split in two, sprinkling me with a swarm of ash and smoldering cinders.

Shawn's weapon clicked empty a few times before he registered it, echoing loudly like clanging bells in the night. He'd taken a knee, probably hoping for some leverage in aim. Not that there was anything to aim at really. Now his eyes flashed wide. Still, he kept trying to fire for several more seconds before it finally sunk in.

"FUCK!"

A hand vanished inside his coat. It came back out with a fistful of rounds, most of them scattering into the dirt and dark his fingers were shaking so much. He did manage to get one of them into the chamber.

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

His firebolt sang as it loaded. It was the most beautiful sound a man could have possibly heard just then. Or ever, for that matter. And he raised it again toward that creeping dark.

I was back up on one knee, coughing up bits of burning wood and the smell of dead meat. Just in time to see Shawn look sharply to one side and try to twist that way almost as fast. He didn't quite make it. Not before another something had rushed right in and taken the top half of him away into the night.

I froze. For one, terrible moment - there was only the rush of blood to my still-attached head as I watched the remainder of Shawn twitch into the ground. There was nothing else. No bolts of fire. No bodies. No sounds but that clicking in the dark. It was everywhere.

I blinked back toward the tree. The girl. She was still hidden behind it where I had left her. Quiet still. Hidden. I hoped.

It was an easy choice. The only one I had left, really.

I ran. But I didn't get far.

My feet took off at a dead sprint through the dark in the opposite way, cutting just past where the others had gone down and those things had come. I took off away from the tree and the girl. I clutched the barrel of my cannon in one hand and ran as hard as I could, despite the dark. Dead brush and scuffed boots sang in the fog.

I didn't get far.

Down the hill, through a few clusters of trees and dead roots. Past whipping, brittle branches and clicking bark. I managed to get a hundred feet or so, and that surprised me. Then something took one of my legs right out from under me.

I flew up into the air and the world slowed as I did. Too much adrenaline and the beginnings of a brief vision of desperate clarity. Then I went face first into the dirt and a loose round exploded out from the barrel with my twitchy finger. The force of it sent me tumbling headlong over the other way.

I hit the ground on my back, arm numb. Whatever it had been, it wasn't some root. I knew that. It had torn me clean up from the ground by one ankle as if I weight no more than a child. And my whole body had twisted around into it.

The leg was still there. Both of them. Thank God.

So was the clicking. It started to hiss in my ear.

And I was crawling quickly away again.

I made it a few dozen more feet. I thought. It took a few seconds, but the sharp, stinging pain finally caught up with my arm where it had all but been wrenched out of the socket. I gritted my teeth, biting back. Then something gouged my left calf.

There was the shrill cry of something in the wood. It took me a moment, but I realized it was me. I threw the cannon in my limp arm back around behind me, snatching the trigger with my other, still good hand.

WHOOOMP.

A ball of flame exploded away wildly into the night, blinding me. And so did that thing. It was a wonder I didn't suddenly feel my leg come away with it. Still, I didn't catch a glimpse of what it was more than a swarm of inky-black shadows in the dark.

I was free again. Enough to launch myself back up to my feet and glance back behind. There was nothing there to see now, though. Nothing, but the ragged sound of my breathing in the dark.

Another blast fired off behind me for good measure.

I limped away, bleeding down my leg. But it was a useless effort. Whatever those things were, they were on top of me already. That clicking and hissing and whispering had already burrowed deep down into the back of my skull and was starting to eat out my brain.

I just kept firing back. Until there was nothing left.

And then I threw the gun.

My good foot caught empty air where there should have been ground. It sent me twisting wildly around and forward and down. Just before I could fall, I saw that mass of black-as-pitch rush at me out of nothing. Something stabbed right through my chest, sticking me there in mid-air fast.

Another shrill cry shot past my lips, and I was goggling down at that something sticking right through one side of me. It was long, and slender like a slip of steel. But there was life in it. I could feel it ebbing just past my lung.

And I could feel it as I snatched the thing in my one good hand, howling out through my teeth. Blood slipped out of hand as it tore up and I pushed the thing back out of me. Or tried to. Rather, I slid himself back out around it.

This time something snatched in for my head. I was already falling backwards, though, clutching at that hole in flesh and bone stuck right through beneath my shoulder. It swiped me across the other arm - the broken one. Slicing open shoulder and more sodden flesh. I barely felt it. My whole body twisted back around instead, as I plummeted over and down.

I waited for the ground to come up to meet me, but it never did. Instead, there was only empty air. And the rush of cool wind.

And then there was only black.


	2. 101 Just a Dream

"Weir!"

I jerked back awake.

If it wasn't the hard clapping of steel-toed boots on the deck beside me, then it was definitely that sudden bark in my ears that did it. I snapped back out of it with a gasp as the air suddenly came back, inflating my chest. Too far. I still felt the rush of cold night air and black as I fell.

I hit the ground with my back, and all that breath got shoved back out in a rush. I didn't die, so I glanced down to that hole punched through my chest. It still hurt. The back of my skull hurt. But the hole was missing.

"What ...?"

I blinked up at the fury of motion all around me, but it was dark. Shapes started to come back in a rush so abrupt it made me sick to my stomach. Someone was standing over me.

"Ms. Weir - if you're ever going to move something with your mind, you might want to start using it for something other than daydreams and banging against the floor."

A chorus of laughs sprouted up in random pockets around me. I just turned my head aside, and puked.


	3. 102 Checking Out

Things settled more by the time Dr. Holloway got me to the infirmary. Class was dismissed, but I couldn't take much joy in that today. The headache I got for my trouble was splitting, and one of the nurses had me holding a cold compress against my forehead while the doctor on call ran some perfunctory scans. He looked bored, and preoccupied as he rubbed his nose, looking at the screen.

"Nothing out of the ordinary, Evelyn," he was saying, sitting at the med terminal beside the bed they had laid me down on. "I can give you something for the headache, but it won't get you out of any classes. Sorry."

He forced half a smile for me. Tired. It wasn't the first time I'd been in there. Not even the second. Maybe just the first time I'd vomited all over myself in front of Holloway and his intro class. He hadn't looked to happy about having to chaperone me to sick bay this time.

I was waiting around outside the infirmary for dad for a while after that. They never would release me without someone coming to check in on me first. I perked up a little when the doors finally opened after an hour or so - but it was only Tess.

"Ugh. Don't get _too_ excited to see me."

"Sorry," I slumped, but tried not to let it show. "I thought he was coming this time."

"Ol' Wier-do?" she shook her head, tossing that dyed-pink hair around light-heartedly. "He told Bertram to do it, and Bertram told me. You know how it goes," she sighed with a small smile.

"I know how it goes."

The doctor came out briefly. Long enough to scowl as soon as he saw who had come to see me off this time. Surprise, but it wasn't Bertram.

"Just try to make sure she gets home in one piece. You _can_ manage that, can't you? It's not too complicated."

"Oh, I sure can!"

She beamed at him, and as soon as he had shuffled back out of the room with a heavier set twist to his lips - added, "Asshole." Then turned to me.

"Come on, Ev. Let's get the hell out of here."

As soon as we got outside in the courtyards, she laid into me about it.

"So whaddya do this time? Finally smack one of those Peekay kids right in the face?"

"Yep," I told her. "That's exactly what I did."

She laughed, giving me a quick, sidelong look.

"Liar."

"Like I'd ever hear the end of it from Jonathon if I did. He'd stop letting me come by."

"Or Hallway," she snickered on. "He's just waiting for a good enough excuse to get rid of you. Seven semesters and you still can't make it past intro?"

"I don't have any talent."

"Not the kind Ol' Wier-do wants ya ta have, anyways."

Lots of kids got a kick out of me still being in that class. I guess they thought I was pretty stupid for never progressing past the intro course on Peekay. It didn't matter that Dr. Weir was one of the most respected theorists and researchers on the station. Or that he had made me absorb so much about it over the years that I could test out of the advanced levels if I really wanted to - written exams, at least. His daughter was just a mundane - sitting in a room full of eighteen-year-olds with more talent in one squint than she had in her whole brain. Dr. Holloway wondered why I was still wasting mine, and especially his, time. But he knew that dad made me go, every day.

"You _should_ just up and do it one of these days," she started up again after we'd reached the central courtyards.

"Do what?"

"Knock one of them flat on their asses. You know? And flick Hallway off and storm out? Maybe that Brick guy."

"Brett."

"Yeah, him."

She barked a laugh, nearly doubling over.

"Or that one girl - I forget her name - but she's always comin' around giving me the stink-eye at Bertram's. That'd be awesome - she's such a bitch."

"Most of them could stop me before I even got close."

"Whatever." Tess shook her head. "You just gotta get the jump on 'em, you know?"

She enjoyed that fantasy with a wistful look on her face for a minute. There was an "outdoor" lecture going on in the courtyards as we passed through, and I glanced at one of the professors shepherding his flock of older students through the paths as he went on about old Haakon and the philosophical predictions he made while ruminating centuries ago on the station under the light of the Rift. Dad had made me read them, even though it was advanced studies that I never qualified for. Most of the old Peekay enthusiasts and researchers there thought that light-show out in space gave Haakon some clairvoyant insight or something. Maybe that it would give some of them a brilliant breakthrough or two, too. All I knew was that it made the flowers in the gardens bloom a pretty sort of serpentine violet that everyone thought was just amazing. And they made sure that gaping skylight out ot space stayed open.

"Well, I've gotta go," Tess broke out of her reverie with a shrug.

"What are you going to do?"

She laughed a little deviously under her breath. Anyone who didn't know her like almost everyone did might have mistaken it for cute with her flamboyant pink hair and impish face. We all knew better, though.

"Not going back to Bertram's chores just yet, that's fer sure. You wanna tag along?"

"Can't." I shook my head at her. "I've got way too much reading to do."

Again, she laughed, but this time at me. "Just remember to make a copy."

"I will."

"That's what you said last time. And you forgot."

"Whatever. Get out of here, or I'll call Bertram."

"Liar."


	4. 103 Jaunt

I woke up with half my face plastered against the metal of my desk. I blinked at the text splayed out on the monitor in front of me for a minute. Then I got a good look at the time as it came into focus.

"Shit!"

And I threw myself away in a rush.

"Shit, shit, shit!"

I was running down the courtyards, shoving early-morning professors and adepts out of my way with a heavy duffle bag swinging over one shoulder, fifteen minutes later. Too long to gather my things and fly out the door. I had stopped for just a second to see if dad had come home since there was no sign of him when I finally woke up. No one had even opened his door.

I was late. I might have clocked a few people that took too long to jump or duck aside with my bag, but I was moving too fast to hear whatever got yelled out after me. Or care just then. They really should have made those walkways wider.

Jonathon wasn't waiting for me outside or anything when I got to his quarters. Honestly, I would have prefered to see him standing there looking pissed and towering like he meant to beat it out of me for being late. At least I would have known what was coming. But no, the door was locked.

So I slumped down to the deck right outside, and waited.

I spent forty-five minutes sitting there with my head in my hands just staring at the bulkhead across the corridor, being bored and miserable. I thought about dad. I wondered about what Tess was doing just then. Probably something that she'd get in trouble for if they ever caught her. Flashes of the dream came back in spurts, but I shut them out for the most part. I was banging my head lightly back against the door to keep from falling asleep again by the time it suddenly opened and I toppled back inside. Jonathon was standing there, over me.

He grabbed my duffle bag, and tossed it inside.

"Get up."

One thing I had made sure I didn't think about that whole time - was what he was going to do to me for being late again.

We ended up spending an hour circumnavigating Riftwatch. The whole station. And by circumnavigate - I meant stairs.

Stairs.

And - I guessed it -

More stairs.

I suppose he didn't much feel like beating me up, since it wouldn't have been too hard for him. But he had no problem at all making me fight gravity for sixty minutes straight. Artificial maybe, but no less heart-rendingly despised by the end of it. I might have shown my teeth to him a few too many times because he ran me through one of the biggest cases in the courtyards at the end. And I was crawling by then - wailing inside my head for something, _anything_ to put me out of my misery for good.

"You were late again," he said, crouched down too easily over me when we were done. He had been there all along, right ahead of me whenever he trusted me enough not to steal a break and stop as soon he wasn't looking.

I flopped down, not even all the way over the last steps. I had one hand on the top, though. That was enough. Shaking, and twitching all over. My brain had all but shut down inside.

Oh thank god that was enough.

"Are you getting bored, Evelyn?"

Lungs fluttered. My heart hurt. I couldn't have answered him to save my life. My entire world had narrowed down to the ins and outs of forcing air around my chest as that voice hovered somewhere out there in space. The sound of blood thundering inside my throbbing skull drowned out everything but him.

"We'll see if you make it back tomorrow. And I hope, for your sake, that you don't waste my time again."

If I had had anything left in me after all of that, I might have wanted to do something terrible. I think I hated him more than anything along the way. But the only thing I could care about once it was all finally over was to lay there, and nothing else. I made a silent pact with myself never to move again.

I guess he had just left me there after that. I laid on the steps for maybe a full minute or two more just breathing before I passed out. I didn't even realize I had - until someone kicked me right in the ribs.

"Living on the catwalks now, Wier?"

That someone laughed. And a few other someones chimed in too.

I jerked back awake. Partly. But all I could manage was a low groan against the deck. My whole body felt like it had been drained of everything good and just left there to rot. An empty, rumpled sack.

It took me another minute or so to figure out what was going on.

"Daddy finally kick you out for being a fucking retard?"

More laughing. I got another shoe in the guts, but I didn't have the wherewithal to more than curl up slowly into a limp ball. Or care. I could only barely feel it after the beating Jonathon had put me through.

Thankfully, though, that was enough for them.

"Come on, Brett. Let's get outta here."

"Yeah. Whatever."

And they were gone.

I managed to pick myself up a little while later, and stumble my way back home. I got a few funny looks from people for whatever hell I must have looked like I'd crawled my way out of.

Dad didn't come home again that night.


	5. 104 Pyschosomatic

I wanted to sleep for a week after what Jonathon had put me through, especially after getting kicked around when I was down by Brett and his friends afterwards. I was just lucky they didn't try to use any Peekay on me up there on the ramparts criss-crossing the courtyards. There must have been enough people close by not to risk it. I knew for a fact that they would have been worse than expelled if they tried anything like that on me outside of class. Dad would have made sure of it.

Usually, I just had to worry about what they managed to get away with _in_ class.

I had passed out on the floor this time - barely making it through the door to my room before I just didn't feel like walking anymore. For that, I got a bunch of red creases on the side of my face to sport around for the next couple hours after I woke up. My legs were all but boneless too. I managed to shower, get dressed, and drag myself back out the door an hour later.

Jonathon didn't put me through too many paces when I finally showed up at his place, feeling forlorn and about ready for the final blow to come crashing down. He surprised me by just having us do a lot of stretches. Mostly to make up for how wrecked yesterday had made me. I realized that after a while of guessing at what new game he was playing to torture me. But if I knew him at all, it was all in preparation for some new crucible tomorrow. And I thought yesterday had been pretty rough by itself.

I was in Dr. Sweeney's office a few hours after that, just sitting back in one of her big, easy chairs and trying not to fall asleep. I almost had a few times on Jonathon with how slow some of those stretches could end up being. After asking me a bit about how I was doing and feeling and getting a rambling account of why I was so dead-tired, she pulled out a pad on me.

"So. You collapsed in Dr. Holloway's class again," she read. And then glanced up at me. "Another dream?"

Elle was over six feet tall and I was almost lying down, so it was really glancing down for her. But I nodded my head, keeping my eyes shut for the most part.

"Something new? Or another of the same from before?"

I told her it was nothing new. I'd had that one about the man getting chased by whatever those things were and finding the woman in the river. All the details were the same. Everything black, and dead or dying. She ran me through them, over and over. Just like always. I thought maybe she was trying to see if I would say something different. But I wasn't sure what that would end up telling her after all this time.

"Still seen through his eyes?" she asked, leaning back with her eyes on me and sipping at some tea or coffee in her mug.

"Like I was right there," I told her with a flippant wave of my hand. "Like I was him doing it."

I got bored with the re-telling, just trying to forget it once it was done. But I could feel every shot fired, and the recoil up my arm. Every friend of his butchered right there in the woods in front me was mine. The weight of that woman as he charged through the trees, running. Even the dank, slimy feel of muck from the dead river he got on his hands after pulling her out.

I felt his thoughts like they were my own. I knew him then, like I knew myself. I was him, and he was me. But I'd never met him, of course. Or any of them, for that matter. I guess that was just as well since they were all dead now anyways. Elle liked to speculate that it might be something like recalling a past life, but she didn't care much for those theories in general. God is dead, she would say, and so are we - when we're done.

That particular dream always left me rubbing just beneath my shoulder for a few days afterwards. Where the thing had stabbed me right through. Or Brennan, I mean. I kept expecting to find a bleeding hole there like he had.

"So what were you doing just before it happened this time?"

The episode, she meant. They didn't happen so frequently that anyone could ever give a good explanation, though Elle tried. My last one had been months ago.

I shrugged my shoulders. I could never really remember afterwards.

"Was Dr. Holloway talking?"

"I guess so."

"About what?"

Again, I shrugged. I'd heard most of it all before over the course of seven semesters. He only spiced a few details up in his lectures, so I mostly spaced out a lot of the time. Sometimes I imagined levitating one of those practice balls and tossing it right at his balding head.

"I don't know. Maybe something about ... subspace particles? I think?"

"Subspace ... _particles_ ..."

She looked at me, hard.

"That's the best you could come up with? Really?"

And sighed, looking down at her pad.

"I'm beginning to see why Dr. Holloway gets so frustrated with you."

"He hates me because I can't do anything," I tossed back.

"Maybe you're not trying hard enough."

"I am. I've tried everything he's told me to do. I've taken the course seven times. Seven times! Nothing works."

She opened her mouth, but I shut her down quickly.

"Dad just keeps making me go because he wants me to prove I can actually do something. Anything."

"Because the alternative would be ...?" she offered.

"That I'm just mundane. Like everyone thinks."

"And you think he's afraid of that being true?"

And there it was.

"Yes."

"Hm."

Elle sat there for a while with her fists balled under her chin and a thoughtful look on her face. I had opened my eyes again, giving her a tired, irritated stare. It was obvious to me - the whole thing, that is. Maybe dad didn't even realize it. He certainly never would have admitted it to me, that's for sure.

Eventually, Elle came out of that introspection and gently dipped her clasped fingers in my direction.

"Maybe he has a different reason for putting you through all that," she ventured, drawing the words out slowly and with some weight. I just shook my head.

My watch beeped.

"Time's up," I sighed wearily at that. "Anything else?"

"Do you have anything else for _me_, Evelyn," she countered with a genuine smile.

"No. I don't think so."

"What about things with ..." she trailed, hinting.

My face flushed hard before she could even finish the sentence. And I stomped all over it before she could even think to.

"Nope. Nothing new."

"Hmm," she mused, smiling way too much at me. She was an old woman - old, like most of the brainiacs wandering around with pet projects and algorithms and fantasies about theoretical breakthroughs in their heads around there. And sometimes I wondered if I was the most interesting thing she could poke and prod intangible fingers at all day. Unlike a lot of the other doctorates around Riftwatch, she specialized in psychology. I didn't think it was too hard to believe she got her kicks out of playing mind games with people.

"Well, alright then. You are - free to go," she joked at my expense with a generous bob of her head.

I rolled my eyes back at her, still flush. Then I got up with a heavy sigh, said my thank you's and goodbyes, and left.


	6. 105 Truancy

I doodled through most of Holloway's class the next day, and I ended up with some nice artwork illustrating where he thought he belonged in the universe. Too bad he caught me, and confiscated it. That got me kicked out for the day with a threat of suspension. He overreacted. Still, it was worth it to see his wispy head go suddenly red and ripen there in front of everyone. And got me out of class early for once. I couldn't forget that.

Which was all well and good because Brett and some of them were giving me looks from the back of the class like a bunch of creepers. Nothing from Jason, though. He never noticed whenever I stole a glance his way.

I found Tess with a free hour or two out in the central courtyards. We people-watched from up on the catwalks while the nebulae from the Rift flared down through the massive view ports above. Sometimes in the middle of the day, it'd overwhelm all the artificial lighting in the courtyards and turn everything that same purplish-red color. You could always tell someone new to the station by how much they gawked at that.

"Too bad," Tess sighed aloud at some point. She was perched with her chin in one hand, leaning on the rail and looking up. I'd been looking down.

"Too bad what?"

"Out there," she pointed to the Rift. "It'd be nice to go out there."

"I guess."

"You know I could get us on one of those survey ships. It would be easy."

"Then do it."

She gave me a sidelong look. Then just shook her head.

"You wouldn't go. Who are you kidding?"

"Why not?"

Maybe I just sounded too bored, because she didn't bother to answer. Just kept giving me that eye.

"You going to skip out on Ressler again later?" I asked.

"I was thinking about it." She slumped down onto both elbows along the rail before glancing back up at me. "Why? You gonna ditch fer once too?"

"Nope. I just don't want to get stuck cleaning the ducts out for him again by myself."

A smile broke out slowly across her face

"Oh, yeah ... sorry."

"No you're not."

She laughed about the whole thing quietly to herself for a while. I went back to watching the people moving about below in the courtyards. Some of the gardeners were out now. Every so often dad loaned me out for some chores with them. It was better than working maintenance for Ressler at least. And the gardens were very pretty. Serene, I suppose. I could appreciate it a bit more having helped keep it that way more than a few times.

"By the way," Tess came back down at some point, "You wouldn't happen to have the- Oh."

I stuck out the data stick I'd pulled out of my jacket pocket for her.

"All of the books for the last week."

"Sweet."

She lit up at that, snatching the thing eagerly from my fingers and tucking it away. It was habit by now, but I still shook my head. I was already sick of them before dad even opened his mouth to assign a new one. Not her, though. I guess it was easier to want what you couldn't have. God knows, no one would trust her around anything valuable or important.

"You remembered it this time," she couldn't help muttering under her breath, and barking a laugh of a sudden. "Ya know what? Yesterday, I was- oh shit."

Her eyes went wide. Horrified. And I turned around to see where she was looking.

"What?"

I got my answer just as quickly. Part of it, anyways. A man in Watch uniform was making his way toward us from the other end of the catwalk. Fast.

I twisted right back around at Tess.

"What did you do?"

I started to cry out at her. But I only got partway. Before I could even open my mouth, she was already moving.

"Run!" she shouted back over her shoulder at me without even glancing back.

"HEY!"

That man bellowed out as us from behind. _Us_, because he wasn't just looking at Tess. So much for keeping out of it. I glanced back at him, then to Tess darting off and away.

"Shit."

I took off after Tess in a blind rush, and the Watchman broke into a run too. My legs were still a little shaky from the other day with Jonathon, but I could outrun Tess - or any of them - in a flat sprint any day. I bolted, and flew right past her with barely a second to spare. She huffed something back at me, but I could care less. Whatever it was, it was her fault anyways. Then I just heard that Watchman behind us.

"... The hell with this."

Tess broke left and hopped the railing. I don't know what the hell she was thinking, but I didn't get a chance to care. A step away from the end of the catwalk, something bit into my back. Then every muscle in my body suddenly went limp all at once. I toppled like a dropped sack, folded up, and half-rolled over onto my face into the first stair down.

And then I had just enough time to watch the Watchman make the last few steps easy on himself catching up with me as I lay there twitching in spurts against the metal.

"Nice try, kid."

He gave that stun gun a few more clicks for good measure, but I couldn't feel it. I just felt my eyes roll back into my head.


	7. 106 Armed and Dangerous

I hit the bulkhead with the side of my face. A hand slapped my back right after, catching me before I could bounce back. It shoved me bodily again into the wall. I choked on the air in my throat that time. And stayed put for a second longer while my knees threatened to hit the deck in a heap. But that didn't do much good.

The Watchman slammed me face-first again. And again, I slapped the bulkhead with my cheek so hard it must have bruised. If I thought that was it, though, again I was wrong.

He shoved me a fourth time. And a fifth.

"What-"

I got intimate with the wall one more time, sputtering.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT, DOUGLAS?"

I finally managed to shriek back at him. He only laughed. And put a forearm to the back of my neck.

"That's Watch Sergeant _Macombe _to you, kid," he grunted in my ear, all wry humor and sloshing tongue. Drunk. Great. If having me squashed against the wall with his full weight wasn't enough, he was trying to gag me with that too.

"What were you two uh," he trailed off, boring his eyes into the side of my head until it hurt, "doing back there?" He grinned a little lop-sided grin. "Huh?"

I sucked in a desperate breath through my teeth. It was the last I got so easily.

When I didn't answer right away, he added a little more weight for emphasis. Something shrill squeaked out of my lungs. And now he had his bared teeth in a rictus grin at my ear.

"_Just_ ...," I gasped, sucking down another ghost of a breath. Black spots started sprinkling my eyes. "... _Talking_ ..."

Again, he shoved his arm sharply in behind me at the small of my back, crushing me against the wall. I think my spine folded backwards. I tried to cry out, but there was nothing left.

"Funny," he snapped lightly, unfazed. "You two are _always _... just talking."

I think I might have suffocated. I was half-dead, sure, before the door behind Macombe slipped open. I couldn't see by then. And everything sounded like it was echoing down a tunnel from far away. But someone snapped a warning at him.

"That will be _all_, Sergeant."

There was a second's lingering with me choked against the wall. An eternity, with the way my lungs had already shriveled up and died. But then Macombe snatched himself back just as quickly as he had struck, and rounded on that someone smartly.

"Yes, sir."

I dropped like a rock to the deck. Everything flopped out uselessly, and I hacked a coughing fit. I was only vaguely aware of Watch Lieutenant Boyce standing there now. He eyed the sergeant while I lay there, choking on the ground.

"Get in here, Ms. Weir," was all he said at the last. Turned. And disappeared back inside.

I took my time getting up. Not that I had much choice, lungs still rattling like they would give out again at any second. But it was time enough to eye the sergeant's boots, waiting for him to leave. He didn't. He just stood there staring at me in an uncomfortable way that made me cringe even more than my battered chest and back already did. And eventually, when I did get up, he gave me a little wink. I slumped a feeble hand on the door.

"See you later, kid."

He tipped his head and turned away. I just stared dully after him, coughing. l tried swallowing hard to get the painful lump out of my throat. I had a hard time thinking about what would have happened if the lieutenant hadn't come out when he did.

Lieutenant Boyce was waiting at Captain Ward's desk for me when I staggered in with my travel luggage. Both men looked up at me at the same time. And I felt what little wind I had gotten back in me abruptly deflate. I slumped, letting those bags fall again. Not that either of them was as bad as Douglas Macombe when he was drinking and on duty. But they sure never pulled me in there for anything good.

I guess they were waiting for me to ask them what for by the look Boyce was giving me. The captain had quickly gone back to the monitors on his desk and whatever he had been doing before I came in. I didn't quite work up the courage to open my mouth and start, though. I kind of hoped they'd just forget whatever it was if I stayed there still and silent long enough. I'd had more than enough of the Watch for one day.

But, no such luck.

"Evelyn Weir ...," Ward suddenly boomed, and I started in surprise. He did it in his long drawn out way, standing up slowly from the chair. He had a tablet in hand and was still reading something, coming around the desk. The lieutenant's eyes never left me.

The captain eventually reached the other side, then sat down his bulk atop the desk. It didn't do much to lessen his size, though. Even at his age he was still all towering muscle and slow, methodical motion that felt like it would abruptly snap and lash out at any second. The closer he got the more I felt like flinching. And the more obvious it was that it wouldn't have made much difference.

He took a long drink at the coffee he held in one hand. Still slow. Still patient, and unhurried. Still unnerving.

I really _hated _that office.

Then his body did suddenly snap. His head. Up at me.

"How are you doing today?"

I flinched. He looked me right in the eye so sharply that I almost didn't hear the question. Or realize how non-threatening it was. Still, I think he meant it that way.

"Wh-what?"

I was so articulate.

Knowing he was trying to scare me didn't make it work any less. And he had me locked in his sights now.

"I asked ... How - are - you - doing today?" He punctuated each word as if he were talking to a little kid. And I managed to get myself together. Mostly.

"Fine. Good," I amended quickly, and then wondered why. He opened his mouth again, and then I _really_ wondered why.

"Well, which is it?" he asked slowly, leisurely. Taking a breath, and giving me the eye. "Are you doing fine? Or are you doing good?"

He drew those words out quietly, and somehow still made them the loudest sound in the room. It sounded so much more stupid when he made me hear it again, too.

I didn't quite get past just staring at him dumbly. I never saw Boyce laugh, but I always wondered afterwards how he couldn't whenever I stood there looking like an idiot in front of Captain Ward. Somehow, it was never Tess who was stupid enough to get caught in there.

I guess eventually they just got tired of it.

"It's a simple question, Ms. Weir," the captain continued just as abruptly. He didn't wait for me to respond. "Let me ask you another one, and be honest with me, now." Those steel pylon-sized arms folded themselves across his massive chest.

I was just surprised he hadn't already bored a hole through my head by now. Not that I hadn't worked up a cold, clammy sweat.

"You wouldn't happen to know anything about a hack into our mainframe late last night. Would you?" He let that settle on me for a moment before stabbing a finger casually from the hip. "Because I know you would tell me if you did."

Another round of staring on my part. I did have the wherewithal to shake my head quickly after a moment this time, though.

A noncommittal grunt was all I got. He didn't sound very convinced. Not that he ever did where either me or Tess was concerned. Not after two decades of watching us grow up.

"Well, then," he continued. His big, balding head dipped down for another drink.

He stole a brief glance over at the lieutenant. Then he came back to me.

"Tell me, Ms. Weir." He reached over and down to set his mug atop the desk with a satisfied sigh. It was a small chance to escape for a second. To not feel quite so much like melting there underneath that molten gaze.

When he came back around, there was a gun in his hand.

My heart stopped this time. I flinched again, and the breath caught in my throat. I might have choked out a small sound too. But the man just held the thing there to one side of his oversized head.

"Do you know how to use one of these?"

The next moment, he was flipping it around to stick out, stock-first, at me.

I didn't take it. I just stared at the man. Wide-eyed. I might have glanced once or twice at Lieutenant Boyce. I'm not sure.

Eventually, I shook my head, though. And barked a shaky laugh. It was the worst kind of joke, and one I couldn't figure out for the life of me right then. Not that I was anywhere near my best with the two of them bearing down. Weapons weren't allowed in Riftwatch. Not unless you were a Watchman. And they never carried firebolts.

I must have looked even more desperate and hopeless than usual because the captain merely sighed, and slowly rolled his eyes. Then he snatched my hand and made me take the thing. He stood.

"Lieutenant."

The other man snapped back to life in an instant. He flanked me from the other side and I jerked in surprise. A little too flush, I squeezed my eyes shut.

"Why don't you show her how to use that thing without blowing her own head off," the capain told the lieutenant. Then he turned back to me one last time, giving me a strangely unnerving, "Look after your father for me," before forgetting all about me back at his desk once more. Boyce helped pick up my bags and herd me out of his office into the hall.

"What?"

I was still a little too shaken, that gun hanging like a dead weight in the one hand. I forgot everything else for a while. The lieutenant had been telling me something but I didn't hear him. To his credit, he didn't even get irritated with me at that.

"Hold it out," he told me patiently. "Like this." And he made me pretend to use that thing they weren't even allowed to bring on the station.

No one else was around. For the fifteen or so minutes he put me through those paces, thank god. It took me a while to understand just what he was doing. Longer still to get it even close to right. By the end, he told me I should be able to hold my own and keep it straight in a firefight. Whatever that was supposed to mean. Me - I was just surprised I could keep myself from shaking too badly by the time we were through. And I very much doubted I wouldn't forget it all as soon as I got the hell away from there.

"Go see Bertram," the lieutenant said as he sent me on my way back toward the station proper. My feet were still a little unsteady. Worse now, with that deadly contraband in hand. "Tell him I sent you. He'll give you what you need to make that piece work. Just watch your back, alright?"

"Bertram?" I asked, bewildered.

"Just go," he pushed me a step, turning back himself. That step was all I got, staring down at the gun in my hand. "And don't let me catch you using that on this station," he called over his shoulder a moment later without looking back.

And I just managed to get halfway out the door with my bags before I even realized what he meant.

"It's not loaded." I laughed. Still, a little shaky. And tucked the thing away in a pocket where I hoped to god no one would see it.

"Of course it's not loaded ..." I mumbled to myself. "But ... Bertram?" And what the hell was _that _supposed to mean? "Watch my back?" I laughed a little insanely rattled laugh. From what? And ... a gun?

To my credit, I did manage to stumble my way back out of there on my own.

Eventually.


	8. 107 Scullion

I hesitated right outside the front door to Bertram's place. It was a little restaurant that he and Tess had quarters above. I stared at it for a minute, then I glanced back over my shoulder. I had waited until that corridor was empty, not that it would be for long. I lost most of my nerve with that thought.

What the hell was I doing?

There was a back door. I could have laughed at myself for being dumb enough to try to use the front, but I was just too shaky to do much of anything. So I skittered away into a side hall, and looped around for the back.

I must have stood there with my head pressed to that rear door for a long time, just squeezing my eyes shut, before it abruptly slid open.

I tried to jump out of my skin. Instead, I froze up.

Terrified, and staring.

It was just Jason.

"H-hey," he said, looking startled enough to find me leaning on the door.

"Hey," I managed to croak back.

And that look turned irritated, and suspicious.

"You ... think you can move? Okay?"

I was standing right in his way. And I had been, just staring dumbly like that, for I didn't even know how long. He was carrying a box full of what must have been prepared meals. He always showed up about once a week to get them from Bertram before spending hours locked down in the libraries and study halls, just studying. Holloway really liked him.

"Well?"

"Yeah."

It took what felt like another minute for me to move out of door. And I couldn't keep my legs from shaking underneath me as I did. That gun was burning a hole in my pocket as hot as my face had turned.

He pushed past me and I cracked my lips into the best imitation of a smile I could manage. I didn't have the courage to keep my eyes on his face, though. He didn't return it. And he didn't waste any time stalking away down the back corridor away from me either.

The absolute _worst_ timing ...

I sank down against the bulkhead beside the door, holding my head in my hands. It was a while before I could even work up the nerve to try to push inside again.

"Well hello there, Evie!"

I jumped. Again. Maybe gasped a bit too loudly, too. Stupid. This time, though, it was Bertram's pudgy face suddenly popping up from behind a counter in the kitchens that got me. He'd been bending over and sifting loudly through some pots and I'd been way too out of it to even notice before I'd moved past him.

"Comin' round to see yer old pal, Bertram, are ya?" he split his pudgy, pink face with a grin as he straightened up. "Guess my cookin' hasn't killed ya yet. I'll keep workin' on it."

There were a few other cooks on staff working around grills and friers, not paying me much attention and shouting back and forth to each other. A busboy ducked in with a cart and gathered up another.

"Hey, you make sure that asshat friend of yours remembers to take care of table five!" Bertram shouted after the kid before glancing back at me.

I took a deep breath to steady that shaking that just wouldn't stop. It mostly just rattled loudly inside my chest.

Bertram stared at me for a second, expectantly, before I opened my mouth. I guess I took too long, though, because he stuck a finger at me.

"Hey, you haven't seen that horrible little brat friend of yours, have ya?" he broke in without missing a beat. "She skipped out on me again and hasn't been back all day."

I clapped my mouth shut. Thought about it. _Really_ thought about ratting her out after her ditching me to the Watchmen. Oh, I could have gotten her back good. But, eventually, I just shook my head.

For some reason, today didn't seem like the day to start.

He gave me a long, skeptical look. But that was it. I must have looked pretty bad for him not to start the inquisition.

"We've got a number five on twelve!" another server ducked his head into the kitchen real quick to bellow out at the cooks. Bertram pointed at one of them, and the guy shook his head, shrugging towards the cook beside him. Bertram threw his hands up at that.

"You look stressed out, Evie," he abruptly said at me, and I had a hard time realizing when he had pulled up alongside and put a hand on my shoulder. "Hard day at class? Or was it Jonathon putting you through it today?" He didn't bother waiting for an answer before turning and waddling off toward the back rooms. "And speaking of _that_, just what do you think you're doing here? Shouldn't you be busy studying? I _know_ you're booked up solid all week, otherwise I'd have you in here with little Tess scraping my floors."

"Keep it up until I get back!" he shouted abruptly over his shoulder at everyone in the kitchens. "We got a lunch rush comin' in soon we'll never meet if you don't move yer asses!"

He got a few shouts back, uncowed. And then he set to muttering.

"Dumb bastards."

I followed Bertram as he pulled me along, and he kept on the whole way toward his cozy little personal office.

"Evie, Evie, Evie," he chided. "Just you wait until I tell your father you snuck off to visit old _Bertram_, huh ... He'll have you so deep in books all day, you won't see straight for a week! And I'll have to have- HEY!"

Someone suddenly came hopping lackadaisically down those back steps up to their apartments as we passed. I looked to see who it was and an infamous mop of rosy-pink hair flopped around as Tess leapt those last few feet, muted music blaring in the air around her head. She came around ahead of us without a word. Then abruptly stopped short, gaping.

"Ev!" Tess blurted out in surprise, tearing her earphones out with a hand. Her own undoing.

"What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be-"

Bertram twisted his fat mass around between us in an instant. He barked so loud that the other woman fell back a step.

"What the HELLdo you think yer doing, girl?"

"Uh ..."

But the old man was already trying to snatch at her.

"I might not be your father but that don't mean I won't beat that scrawny ass 'til it bleeds! GET OVER HERE!"

She didn't, though. She ducked him and slipped right past, bolting through the back door in a heartbeat. Bertram trudged a few, rolling steps after, but he was too slow. She was already gone. So he just shook a fat fist after her and shouted down the hall.

"Damnit, I love that girl but I'm gonna have ta kill her," he said as he came back and caught me up toward his office. He sighed, gesturing me inside. I heard the door close and the lock beep behind. He sighed again.

"The captain sent you by. Didn't he?"


	9. 108 Locked and Loaded

"Well. Knew this day would come. Eventually."

Bertram slapped his desk with both hands, pushing himself up with a heavy grunt. I stared at him for a second with my mouth open, as he started looking around his office for something.

"Now where did I let it get to," he was rubbing his hands up his sides to his face and bald head emphatically, thinking and pawing around at various things. His neck was so thick, you could barely see it but it snapped around quickly this way and that anyways. I shook my head where I was sitting on the other side of that rickety old desk.

"... What?" I tried to ask, but it was cut short by him twisting a knob underneath his desk. A panel on the deck slipped open at his touch.

"Here we go."

He dug a box out of the hole and it came down on the counter between us. I didn't get to see what was inside it. But he pulled something out and held it up for me to see.

"You know what this is, right?" he asked, twisting a slug of smooth obsidian. At least, it looked like a chunk of rock. But it didn't reflect any of the lights in his little office. It was just a dark spot in the bright room, black as midnight.

"Perennium," he explained. "Refined into a small arms ammunition round." I don't think I'd ever seen him so serious for so long. He closed the box and held out his other hand to me.

"Let me see it."

I didn't have to ask him what he meant. I just pulled the pistol out of my pocket without thinking about it, and pushed it toward his waiting hand. He popped open a release on it, showing me the chamber, before pushing the pitch-black round inside. He clicked it back shut and the thing sang aloud with a shrill ring.

"Release the safety," he told me, slipping his thumb along the side of the stock.

"Point," he pointed it away into the room.

"Aim down both sights."

He closed an eye.

"Breathe out."

He did.

"And squeeze."

There had been a big, old bucket sitting over there on the floor next to the wall in one corner. Something flashed across the room with a shrill scream of light. A half a second. And then that bucket was slapping the bulkhead on its own, a big black hole rent through the side. Dirty water started rushing out onto the deck.

I jumped at that. I couldn't help it.

That whooping rush hit like a thunderclap in the closed space. It nearly knocked me out of my seat. The lieutenant had had me handle and aim the thing for a good while. He hadn't had me actually shoot it. And there was a world of difference.

It took me almost a full minute to shake that off - the sudden, gripping thought of something like that tearing into another person like it had that metal bucket. The image of it flashing toward me was an unbidden nightmare behind my eyes. I could imagine what it would feel like just from the sound of it. And I couldn't keep the thought from crowding out my head.

Bertram didn't seem to notice.

"Not like the vids, huh? Things aren't the same off-station," he was saying, staring off into space after that bolt. For some reason, the mess didn't seem to bother him all that much. It certainly wasn't what I cared about just then. "Or anywhere else for that matter. There's a good reason why we don't allow these things in Riftwatch. Peekaylings are bad enough."

At some point, he turned back on me. The pistol had made it back into my jacket pocket all on its own.

"I just hope you never have to use it," he told me. Then smiled. Sadly. And it was the saddest look I had ever seen him make.

He just reached out and squeezed my shoulder.

"Take good care of yourself, Evie."


	10. 109 A New Lesson

"Your head'll explode doing that."

"Shit!" I shrieked out, nearly jumping right out of my seat again. My legs bumped the desk enough to move the pencil - the first time it had since I had sat down, no matter what I tried. Nothing Halloway or anyone else had taught me had ever worked one bit. And that night wasn't going to be the start either, I guess.

"God damn it, Tess ..."

I spun around on the other woman, and she threw her hands up to ward off that murderous glare.

"Jeez ..."

"You scared the hell out of me."

"Sorry. It's not like I was supposed to be here or anything ..."

"What? What time is it?"

I spun around and caught sight of the clock. Then let out a groan. I'd been at it for hours. Again, and I hadn't managed to move a thing even just the slightest bit.

"No luck again, huh?"

I didn't have to answer her. She knew as well as I did I couldn't do anything. If it wasn't for Dad, I wouldn't have even bothered trying.

"So." She made her way around to my desk with a flippant pout of her lips, "what did he have ya workin' on this time?" I leaned aside, and she read the title over my shoulder. "_The Cosmological Horizon_."

She gave me a funny look. She knew reading assignments were one of the few things that could get me frustrating myself doing nothing for hours on end. Those dry, old texts just had me nodding off after a few minutes. It was the real reason why I bothered staring at small, inanimate objects. If I could manage to move one even the slightest bit, Dad would have to take a lot more interest in that than craming a bunch of tasteless facts and theories into my head. And he never argued when he found me spending time that way.

"I give up," I muttered forlornly. Tess just laughed. It wasn't the first time. And it probably wouldn't be the last.

Tess and I usually hung out at mine and Dad's place, and that night didn't start out to surprise me. It was late, but I didn't have anywhere to be next morning so I let Tess mess around on my computer and tap into the message traffic for a few interesting people until it was much later. At one point, Tess had me messing around with trying to push that pencil on my desk again while we laughed at what a few people like Dr. Tritcher and Professor Brooks had to say about Halloway. I was just making fun of him while Tess threw her voice in mock-imitation, reading out loud. But, as I put on a flip expression and mockingly squinted at it like most of the kids in class did, it did surprise me by rolling right across the metal into the wall.

"HOLY SHIT!"

Tess leapt back into the room and fell over. I just froze where I was still sitting in the chair, aghast. For a full minute, no other words or thoughts could have possibly gotten into or out of my head as I stared.

"D-do it again!"

Tess had climbed up to my knee, clutching at my pantleg in a feverishly excited deathgrip. I blinked over at her. I couldn't tell how long I had just been sitting there staring at that pencil as it tilted back and forth the slightest bit from the force of the initial roll.

"I - Did I do that?" I mumbled, still unable to really move or think.

"Who - who the _hell _else did it, you think?" the other woman snapped back almost incoherently.

I glanced around my room even so, pretty sure that there must have been someone else. But we were alone. We'd been alone all night.

Eventually, I made my way back around to the desk and that pencil.

"O ... okay ..."

I squinted. I breathed in and out, nice and slow. I emptied my head of everything else as best I could. The room faded away. Tess faded away. And then there was just me, and that pencil.

And nothing happened.

Seconds passed.

Minutes passed.

... and nothing happened.

"No! Like you did it before!" Tess abruptly screeched at me, breaking my concentration. My eyes floundered over at her.

"Wh-what? I don't even - I don't know _what _I did ..."

Tess's head collapsed down against my thigh, and I heard her exasperated sigh. I blinked, but she bounced back to her feet, shaking her head quickly away.

"That's okay. That's okay." She was hugging me around the neck from behind. "You did it. You _finally_ did it. That's what matters. I saw it. I _saw_ it, Ev."

I wasn't sure what to say or think. I don't know that it mattered as much that I couldn't do it again just yet. I had done it once, and I could do it again. Right? I wasn't mundane. All those kids in class. Halloway. _Everyone_. They were all wrong.

They were all ... wrong.

I got excited. Then it almost just as quickly deflated with a sudden rush of despairing air.

"No one will believe me," I groaned in sudden realization, and Tess almost slapped me.

"They won't believe you either!" I growled back. She shook her head.

"Who cares?" Her hands came up emphatically. "At least you know you _can_ ..."

Maybe. Maybe she was right. But I didn't know how-

The front door opened. I heard it slam back on its hinges, and jumped in my seat.

Tess and I both spun around toward my bedroom door ...

Just in time to see Dad come storming in.


	11. 110 Kicked Out

Nolan Weir had a doctorate in just about everything, it seemed like. One of the oldest men on Riftwatch, you still never saw him but when he was charging about like the fate of the entire system was waiting up for him. Who could know if it wasn't with all the things he did, or people said he was always doing. He was one of the most respected too, which everyone kept reminding me when I couldn't perform even the simplest psychokinetic trick. He was a genius, and more attuned than any other person anyone seemed to know. Every student tried to be the next prodigal Nolan Weir, and all the other researchers, scientists, and professors either gave him ample latitude or respect in regards to just about anything. He got whatever he wanted. Too bad all he ever seemed to want was to be left alone to his work.

They all said it. Everyone I ever heard talking about dad had to mention it. He could have been making a fortune for himself - if he'd just struck out as an independent for hire planetside or in any of the larger colonies. Only Bertram said that it wasn't so simple, and that most of the people who thought it was didn't know a single thing about the way life in the rest of the system worked.

He was gray-haired and tall, with blue eyes that glinted so fiercely inside his wizened skull that people always thought he was glaring. He never stopped or even slowed down for anyone who he didn't think was worth his time, and very few of the other people around Riftwatch were. Most of them seemed only an touch less brilliant themselves - if at all. And he certaintly didn't mince words with Tess as he stalked toward the door of my room.

"Theresa. Go home."

"But Ev just-"

"Now."

Tess could only throw up her hands with a glare of her own for a second before she had to start up toward the door. There was no arguing with Dr. Weir. At least, not for Tess. Certainly not for me. The other woman did manage to catch my attention once she was past dad's shoulder, though.

"You tell him," she mouthed emphatically with a choice gesture at the back of dad's head.

When she reached the door, she spun around one last time - slowly. She gave dad the weirdest look I might have ever seen on her face. Too serious. Like she'd just figured something phenomenal out.

And then she was gone, the front door slamming back shut in her wake.

"You won't believe what-" I started to say, but dad didn't even waste another second before tearing right past me into the room. He made for my closet compartment and immediately started pulling out all my other clothes in there.

"What ...?"

He had a daypack in one hand, and started stuffing it full of whatever he could find. A coat, shirts, pants, socks, underwear - disappeared inside as he crammed it as full as he could without so much as a word.

"What are you doing with all my clothes?" I finally managed to blurt out at him once he was done.

He just spun around, snatched me by the arm and dragged me out toward the front door where he shoved that pack into my hands.

"Now, listen to me carefully, Evelyn," he started, opening his mouth for the first time to speak to me in almost a week. He bent over and looked me hard in both eyes.

"Go down to Loading Bay Thirteen. Quickly. Do not stop, and do not go anywhere else. I will meet you there in twenty minutes. Do you understand?"

"No ..." I shook my head slowly from side to side, wide-eyed now at the desperate strength in that grip on my arm. "What-what's wrong?"

He let out a short breath, staring into me for a long moment. And I started to feel the way I did when I'd been dragged into the Watch Captain's office and handed that gun I tried to forget about in my pocket.

"Just go down to the loading bay," he repeated, softer this time but still with that hard, frantic edge to it. "Thirteen. Don't speak to _anyone_."

"O-okay," I managed, bobbing my head ever so slightly and not sure what any of that was really supposed to mean.

"Okay?"

"Okay," I repeated.

"Go."

He pushed me out the door into the corridor, and it slammed shut one last time behind.


	12. 111 In the Gutters

A bunch of outdated and useless thoughts came back and rushing to my head like blood as soon as I was away and scurrying down the corridors toward loading bay thirteen. I was used to dad being gone for days at a time - he spent so much of it researching, or experimenting, or ... whatever he felt like he needed to do so much. I was used to getting along without him these days without seeing him for weeks at a time sometimes. I was even used to him coming home in the middle of the night without much to say at all. But he had never burst in the door like that and just thrown me out onto the deck with barely more than a parting word.

I slowed down, and seriously thought about turning around and just going back home. Maybe even demanding an actual explanation before I went anywhere at all.

... Like that'd ever work.

I don't know. Something about that look in his eye ...

It made me start to run to get where I was supposed to go.

I took the quickest way. After growing up there it was hard not to know every causeway and bulkhead like the back of my hand. People were still out and about, though - the latenight drifters and somnabulant thinkers. It's not like they did anything more than dim the station lights come night time. You had to go planetside for a real night, and even those barely existed in the larger colonies.

Dad had said to be quick, and bay thirteen was on the opposite side of the station. It would have taken someone else a half hour or more to get there. Not me, though. The fastest route was also the one no one ever used, I knew.

Besides Tess and me, of course. I made for the nearest maintenance shaft and dropped down into the poorly-heated, dark and clammy underbelly of the station that wound all the way beneath the central gardens toward the bays on the other side. It was more or less a straight shot through those access tunnels above the old morgues. I shouldn't have known the combination to the hatch at the end, but ... Well, Tess had picked up a few tricks over the years. Not a lot of security doors could keep her out for long, and I remembered the numbers.

It was dark down there, and dripping coolant echoed. The hexagonal metal stretched away in mostly empty corridors with enough room to breathe and then some while still managing to feel claustrophobic. Emergency lighting wires lined the corners of the deck and ceiling, but they weren't much help. Ressler and his crews were the only other ones who came down here, and they always brought lamps of their own. No time for that, though, and I was stuck with what I had. As it was, I could barely move fast enough to make good time. I hit the small light on my wristband, and let it fight back the black as best it could, leading me on ahead.

I jogged along as quickly as a dared in the dim, unfocused semisphere of light with only the clamping sounds of the steel grates under my shoes for what felt like forever. I was the only thing alive down there in that place. Or, at least ... that's what I thought.

Footsteps.

I slowed, spinning around but stilll moving. It was too dim to see much behind. I looked back forward, using the light on my wrist, but that was no good either. The dingy walls bounced the sound around so much I couldn't tell which way it came from. And it stopped before I could. I was alone again in the dark with just my heavy breathing.

It was nothing. I tried to tell myself that. It was too easy to imagine something down there. The place had always given me the creeps. Tess too, though she wouldn't ever admit it to me. It wasn't much comfort knowing a bunch of rotting old corpses were wrapped up and entombed underfoot. And they had been there long before I was ever born.

I picked up speed again. As much as I could. As much for my imagination as that tone dad had had in his voice when he told me to get to the other side. Like it was really important. Even though I still had absolutely no idea why.

Something chirped sharply in the dark and I almost tripped jumping out of my skin. A shrill sound ripped out of my throat before I could catch it, and echoed loudly down the corridor behind. I glanced morosely after it like I had lost something. I could have sworn I heard something else before the sound ran all the way away from me.

The comm on my wrist vibrated. I glanced down at it in a flush, tearing at the buttons. A small image of Tess flashed across the band.

"Of course she is," I growled aloud, and looked to see if the call went through. No luck down in those tunnels. I voiced a message into the band telling her the gist of what dad had said to me.

Then I stopped.

There it was again.

I was sure of it this time. Footsteps. Coming from ... behind.

"Send: Tess," I whispered down at my wrist furtively, then came back up. "Hello?"

I shouted down the tunnel. I didn't get an answer - just a chill creeping up my spine with that word bouncing around and away from me. Too late, I thought I should have just kept running and not said anything. But ... too late.

I did whip back around again, but I took too long. A shape formed in the dark of the tunnel behind against the dim light lines, sweeping in on me. It sped up as soon as it saw me start moving again, so close already that I all but froze up realizing it had been just behind me almost all along.

I started to run. That shape split in two. I lost a step in surprise, and they both just flowed right around me.

I stopped when the one slipped around ahead of me so they completely blocked the corridor. I shriveled up inside, shaking. They kept their distance, and I whipped my head back and forth between the two in a panic.

"What ..." I started, but I wasn't really sure just what to say.

Not that it mattered.

"Well, well - what do we have here?" one of the shadows abruptly spoke, and something relaxed and tensed inside me all at once. I got a glimmer of a face. Human, at least. And so was that voice. Not some walking corpse, or ... something. I shivered and they got close enough that I could almost just make them out in the shallow light.

"Is that her?" the second one said, hunching down on himself a little behind me.

The first nodded. "Not so dangerous, huh?" he said, and started circling. They both got into it. At first, I wasn't sure what was going on. But something still made me cringe at each pass.

"Wh-what are you doing down here?" I managed. And I had to duck one of them that got too close for it.

"Lookin' for you," he said. The other laughed.

"Wonderin' why you came down here in the first place. Not that I can complain, of course."

"What," I swallowed my words with a shake again, "what do you mean?" I tried to back away in some direction, but they kept me in a tight circle. I squeezed my arms around me tight, blinking back and forth.

"Not a lot of witnesses," the one explained with a sporting cant of his head. "'Specially at this hour."

"Witnesses," I mumbled the word through lips that refused to stay still. "Witnesses for w-what?"


	13. 112 Third Degree

I almost didn't feel it.

Peekay.

Not until it hit me full force from the side.

Invisible hands snatched me right up off the ground and threw me sideways into the wall. I screamed too, but it was short-lived. The damp bulkhead smashing into my ribs cut me off quickly enough.

And then I just hung there. Defying artificial gravity.

One of those two stalked up to me. He had a hand up, and I could see his eyes glinting - squinting - in the dark. There was a whiff of bared teeth and a rictus grin in the low light as he looked up at me.

"This is going to be real easy for you now," he snarled up at me, looking pleased. His fingers and eyebrow twitched, and I slid up the wall just a little bit higher. "You see, you just have to stay - right - _there_."

My bones crunched harder into the metal, squeezing a small squeak out from my strangled lungs.

"And don't move," he cracked a smile at his own joke. "My friend here is going to do what he does best and perform some ... internal surgery ..."

The other one barked a laugh.

"Don't let 'im fool ya. It's really more art than science. What with me not bein' licensed and all."

"Not sure why," the first continued, flicking those fingers menacingly, "but your worth a good deal of money to someone." His friend slipped something from his coat into hand, and there was the glint of steel in the dark. "Really," the first shook his head with a heavy, satisfied breath. "I'm just glad we got to you first."

The other one came at me with a knife. Slowly. I saw it and started to freeze up before I even finished making the connection in my brain between what they were saying and what was about to happen. Eyes wide, and those grins grew as my realization did. I tried to squeak something out through my shriveled lungs, but it was claustrophobic with that crushing grip holding me fast.

He got closer, and I just stared. I felt myself slid back down until I was level with him, scraping against the bulkhead. He pulled back with that knife. I still didn't get it. Not until he thrust in at my guts.

For a second, things went black. And still.

Then I came back - and the knife was clattering away to the floor.

"God damnit."

One foot had swept up, around, and back down. It slapped the man's wrist and sent his knife flipping over and out of his fingers. He grabbed that hand with his other one, giving me an irritated look.

"You wanna hold her still, asshole?" he snapped back at the other.

My foot came up again before either of them could do anything, though, and snapped right into the knife-man's chest. He tumbled over backwards across the corridor into the opposite wall.

"Fucking _bitch_!"

He leapt back up and started to charge me with his bare hands.

"Hey! Get the fucking thing and cut her throat already!"

The knife-man reversed course with a grumble, and scrambled for his lost weapon. He ended up on his knees after a few seconds, kneeling down in the dark.

"Well?" the other one was demanding impatiently.

"Wasn't me, asshole. Fuckin' cunt kicked it down through the grates. I can't reach it."

"Well, get it!"

"Shut the fuck up! I'm trying."

That one man was straining an arm into the drainage gutters in the metal floor. It didn't seem to be doing him much good, though.

"I can't hold her here forever," the first said, clutching the side of his temple in one hand and starting to buckle under the pressure of holding my entire weight up with his mind. His eyes twitched, and I started to sag back down to the ground. I struggled.

"Fuck!" the one on his knees slapped the deck with both hands. He twisted his head back around toward the other, snarling, "I can't get it!"

"Fine."

The one holding me reeled back, and threw his hand forward. I bobbed with it, feeling bile bubble up in my throat. Before I even knew what was happening, I was hurtling away down the corridor into the black.

I screamed again before I hit the ground. It was too dark to see it coming and, for a moment, it felt like I was falling down a hole. Maybe I was. But then my shoulder hit metal, and I twisted over into the side of my face.

"Hey, what the fuck did you do that for?" echoed down after me, bouncing angrily off the walls.

"Shut your mouth. Here's your goddamned knife. Come on."

Footsteps again. I choked up some blood or something on the floor, and pushed myself up on my elbows. They were scraped up, but I couldn't feel it. My chest and ribs hurt most.

Somehow, I got my legs folded underneath me. My knees were still okay, and I climbed up on top of them until I was hunched over, unsteady on my feet. I cradled my side with one hand and looked back.

Those two weren't far behind. The knife-man looked like he was about to rush me as soon as he saw I was up and free. The other one held him back. I turned around and just started hobbling further away.

"You had your chance."

Light erupted out of the dark. I blinked back over my shoulder in time to see fire washing wildy up someone's arm. "Woah!" came the startled yell, followed by a shaky laugh as he got it under control, forcing the fire down into a spinning ball inside one palm. His hand was gloved, and slick in the angry, flickering light.

That arm pitched back like he was about to chuck a ball after me. I got a good glimpse of their faces. No one I knew, or had ever seen before on Riftwatch. Then that light came flying after me.

I ran. My ribs stabbed into my lungs, but I ran. I charged down the tunnel, suddenly flying on my feet in the dark. It lit up. Heat scorched the whole way, howling right behind.

I dove. A pool of shadow opened up along one side, and I leapt for it. Too bad I came up short and hit the wall instead.

I bounced over into the ground, crying out. New bruises on top of the old ones. I hit the deck on my stomach, looked up, and then twisted instantly back down. Fire roared over my head, and lazily burst apart.

I screamed as it picked me up again and threw me away. Heat washed all over everywhere. I was dead. A million thoughts flashing through my mind were suddenly dashed by that one.

Burning to death.

And the last thing I got to hear were the sounds of my own shrill screaming, and those two laughing behind me.


	14. 113 Riposte

"Whaddya think? Dead?"

"I don't know. Probably."

"Well I hope not. I wanted to get in on this too, you know?"

"Think I'd cut you out for not cutting her throat?"

"Who knows with you, man."

"A job's a job."

"I hear that."

Voices.

Someone was talking. Close. Footsteps, too. They got closer, squelching against moisture on the floor and the heavy clack of steel grates. Echoes and dark. Low laughter. The smell of wet ash and smoke, thick in the air.

"Get her up."

"What? If she's still breathin' then it's my turn to-"

"Just fucking do it, damn it."

"Whatever. You better not-"

Two steps, really close. Right beside my ear. Boots, and the reek of damp mold. Hands reaching down. They grabbed me by the arm, and my eyes snapped open.

That arm twisted back, free hand slipping fast into the man's throat before he could blink. Crush the nose. Ankle around ankle. He was overextended, leaning forward. It took him right off his feet, and he plunged face-first into the deck.

"Fffffukk!"

I rolled up and over his back. The other one was just a step away. Both legs swung around, hard, and caught him beneath the shins. He toppled with a sharp cry. I twisted away again, threw myself into the deck, and pushed back up.

I had my feet - they had the ground. One with a broken nose, the other scrambling to get back up. He snarled at me as he did. Peekay again. You could always tell by that scrunching of the face. I sidestepped.

Air whistled past my ear. One of the lights behind winked out, crushed in on itself against the bulkhead. My hand was at my side next, slipping free the fighting stick there. And my thumb flicked the button on its side.

The one man finished the slow climb to his feet. Teeth still bared at me, he pulled his hand back and started squinting at me again - as hard as he could it looked like this time. Both ends of the stick shot out two feet to either side until I had the full staff in hand, though. Another second, and it brained him up one side of the head and down the other. And his head wasn't much good for anything more after that.

I took one look at the man bleeding out on the floor. He was whimpering a string of muted obscenities into a blood-washed hand on his back, oblivious. He didn't notice me stagger then, and nearly topple. And I pulled it together again long enough to whip the butt of the staff into his skull.

Then he was out too.


	15. 114 Dead Weight

They weren't dead.

Training had taken over ...

But they weren't dead.

I slumped back against the bulkhead. My head felt lighter than air. And, somehow, I got numb fingers working enough to click the button on the staff again. It slid back into itself until it was only the foot-long stick in my hand once more.

It was dark, but I could see the subtle rise and fall of their breathing chests. The one gurgled loudly on his broken nose. I managed to kick out a feeble foot and send him over onto his side after a few tries. He stopped choking after that.

Maybe Jonathon had given me one too many lessons. Or just enough. Sparring with him had always been more fun than reading for hours on end anyways. But now, not so much. Sitting there staring dumbly at those two broken bodies ... I ... well -

Nothing. I didn't know _what _to think anymore.

Dad had told me once, long ago and a little while after he found out about Jonathon's own lessons on the side with me, to always keep that thing with me. He'd almost killed the other man when he had finally found out about him taking me on as a student on a whim - no matter that Jonathon was twice dad's size and all muscle. Jonathon never told me where he picked up all his tricks. He was as old as dad - as anyone in Riftwatch. But not always. And I never knew why he bothered with me.

He'd never hurt me like that. _I'd_ never hurt anyone like that.

Dad had told me to always keep that thing with me. I never really understood why. Maybe now, it made some sense. I don't know. Maybe not. I realized I still had that gun with me too. Good thing I had forgotten about it until then.

I got a sick feeling deep in the pit of my stomach, staring at those two on the ground and feeling like my hands were dirty.

I really didn't know what to think anymore.

It might have been a long time. Just sitting there, and staring. Much more than twenty minutes, I thought, but it was hard to know for sure. I found myself limping the rest of the way down the old maintenance tunnels towards the loading bays again some time later without really knowing how I'd gotten started.

When I stumbled out into bay thirteen, I was still in a daze. Numb, and unfeeling. People were suddenly all around me again, bright lights shining everywhere now as the late-night shifts shouted and worked. Loading and unloading cargo shuttles from off-station. Making my head hurt.

For the longest time, no one seemed to notice me. Then Dane Fitzpatrick did.

"Oh my god, Weir ... what happened to you?"

I came up short when the old bay manager caught me by both shoulders with his hands, jolting me out of that fugue. I had worked for him plenty of times over the years and his eyes were wide and grave atop that recognition.

"I'm okay, I just ..."

"Weir!"

He shook me again. I had started toward the floor without realizing it. There was too much empty space in there, and my head felt like it just couldn't fit it all. I tried to even out, easing myself down to the deck. But Fitzpatrick wasn't letting me.

"Hal! Kendrick!" he shouted at two men working a loader nearby. He waved them over impatiently with a heavy hand.

"Oh, what the hell, Dane," one yelled back at him.

The other, "What's up, boss?"

"Just get the hell over here!" Fitzpatrick snapped again.

And they gave me the same leery eye as the bay manager when they got close.

"What the hell happened to _her_?"

"Where's Thaddeus?" Fitzpatrick ignored him, forcing me to shrug out of the rumpled, beaten up pack on my back. I managed to get down to my knees on the deck, but he wasn't letting me lie all the way down.

One of the two shrugged.

"Well, I saw him over near one of the shuttles. Go get him!"

The bay manager waved a hand that way.

"Hey. Hey!" I felt his hands trying to squeeze my arms, and he was moving his head to keep pace with my drooping eyes. Somehow, I was almost all the way down to the ground. He was gingerly holding my head up again.

"Stay with me, kid."

Another old man swam into view beyond Fitzpatrick at some point. This one was dressed in a long, elegant red coat over his clothes. He dipped his craggly face and white beard in where I could see it.

"Found her just like this, Thaddeus," the bay manager's voice floated about the head of the old man. "Came wandering in without a word to anyone until we caught her."

That old man stared at me for a moment. Thaddeus. The Head Archivist of Riftwatch. The thought that he was the last person on the station to be down there came slowly, inching across my brain. I blinked back up at him.

Then someone else was at his side. He glanced that way.

"I think you've run out of time," the head archivist said, rasping out in his impossibly calm voice. "Wouldn't you agree?"

It felt like the whole world was spinning on its side. For some reason, it only bothered me, though.

That other someone was too busy looking at me. And I just got a glimpse of him before winking out completely.

"He was right," that one said.

Then I was gone.


	16. 115 Psychepoulosis

Once his daughter was out, Nolan Weir bent down to touch her head with his hand. The bay manager stared for a few seconds longer before rounding on his two dockhands.

"Hal?"

"Boss?"

"Go figure out what burned her up like this and shut it down," he thrust an arm the way she must have come. "Kendrick?"

"Yeah?"

"Get back to work."

Both men trudged off in different directions, Kendrick muttering under his breath. Fitzpatrick came back around.

"I'm real sorry about this, Doc," he apologized, looking distraught. His hands twitched as if he wanted to wring his own hair out in despair at that sight. "Not sure what could have done something like this around here. I mean, I know those fucking - excuse me, Doc - those _fucking_ exhaust ports don't have the best shielding and," he hesitated, "you know ... but this ... I can't even say ... god, I'm sorry, Doc ..."

Nolan didn't look at him, checking over the girl instead. "It's not your fault, Mr. Fitzpatrick," he told him simply after a time, peeling back open that ragged old brown jacket of hers to get a better look. There was a lot of scarring. Burns covered her face and hands. The pack he had given her had taken the brunt of it from the skin on the back of her neck down to the shoulders where it stopped, but it was a small favor. And there was the heady smell of smoke about the rest of her.

He looked down at that mess. And kept his face straight.

"What can you do for her, Thaddeus?" he asked back at the other man. The head archivist studied her broken form with a critical eye. A few seconds, and then he sighed aloud.

"She'll lose a lot of how it happened and probably everything after," he explained clinically. "Maybe a few minutes before too. There is no way to know for certain in matters like this."

"That's fine," Nolan told him, still not taking his eyes away. There was more to it than that, but the other would never say so. "She's better off not knowing." And they were both content to leave it at that. "Let's get somewhere out of sight."

Fitzpatrick led them to his office with little prompting. Nolan lowered his daughter down onto the man's desk after scattering the various things there to the floor, ordering the bay manager to wait outside. He shut the door behind him, and Weir looked up across the unconscious girl's body to the head archivist.

The older man shrugged his shoulders behind, puffing out at his white beard and moustaches. He took a deep breath, settling the space around him. Then, without another word, he bent over across from Weir and put his hands on the girl.

Nolan waited patiently while Thaddeus closed his eyes and his whole face scrunched up into a mass of liver-spotted skin and worn old wrinkles. Minutes passed. They dragged on, and neither man moved. The blood drained from Thaddeus' face. Nolan only started to genuinely feel it after hunching over there long enough for his bones to ache.

Things began to shift.

It started in her hands. Nolan watched as black, charred flesh knitted itself slowly back together. Veins popped out beneath the skin, red and angry. They crept back up her arms beneath the tattered sleeves of her jacket, muscles tensing hard behind. Her hands curled into little claws. By the time it reached her spine, her entire body was convulsing like it would tear itself apart.

Nolan waited. If the girl had been awake, she would have been screaming. As it was, he could all but feel the agony of it just in the watching. Thaddeus continued his work, brow lowered in concentration. When the burns on her neck started to slip away into clean, pink flesh once more, the old man was shivering himself. Shaking, by the time all that was left was the faintest white as of old scars. And Evelyn was foaming at the mouth when the old man finally collapsed.

Nolan turned the girl's head aside to stop her choking. Her whole body arched violently before she collapsed herself. And they were some of the most terrible moments of his life he spent waiting then. For her heart to start beating again. Her heart that had been pumping so fast the past few minutes that it might have burst inside her chest. And if not that, her mind might have just seized up instead.

He looked back up to Thaddeus, and the old man was just barely holding himself up by his elbows against the deck to the other side of the girl. The veins were black beneath his papery flesh, and he was twitching badly. It took a long time for it to pass. For both of them. But the girl abruptly started breathing again.

"Thank you," Weir said, hugging the girl's unconscious head to him in the next instant. Thaddeus might have nodded. Or convulsed again. It was hard to know for sure.

By then, there was a knock on the door and Hal Fengler was back and outside when Nolan went to open it. He had another man with him as well. That one hung back a step at the sight of Nolan Weir's daughter hanging limp and apparently lifeless, but whole now, in his arms and the head archivist bent over on his knees on the deck. Hal did a double-take on his own on looking in. But he knew better than to question the doings of men like Weir and Thaddeus.

"Found the hatch to the maintenance tunnels open," the man said instead, sticking a thumb back over his shoulder. "Looks like someone cracked the combo on it."

Nolan looked to Fitzpatrick and the bay manager bobbed his head at Fengler. "Thanks, Hal," he said. And dismissed the men.

He shook his head, deflating at the radical change in the girl's condition.

"I'll call the Watch and have them get some boys down there to check it out."

"Please do."


	17. 116 Fade

"This escalated quickly, Nolan."

Thaddeus chimed in then from inside the office once the bay manager was gone. He glanced up from under those thick, white eyebrows. It was still a struggle for him, but he managed. That rasping voice was low, even for him.

"First the message from Anders. Now an attack here on the station the very same day." He sucked in a heady breath, still holding his face up from the ground.

Weir looked down on the girl in his arms, remembering the burn pattern. Too clumsy and unfocused for a common firebolt sidearm. An explosion would have done it. Some incendiary tech perhaps, or Pyschopyresis. Either way, it was not an inexpensive assassin to buy.

"What do you think, Thaddeus?" Weir asked the older man.

"Twenty years is a long time," the head archivist rasped.

Nolan merely canted his head. "I agree."

"The other side has not merely waited all this time."

"No," he assented, but time had more value to him and had therefore been used more industriously. He started toward the door with the unconscious girl still in his arms. Thaddeus managed to pick himself up, and hobble along after.

Outside, the midnight work crews were minding themselves as they went about loading and unloading the night's shipments through the bay from Geise Hub. He would have chosen a better hour and had the place cleared if at all possible, but the sudden missive had not allowed for much time.

There was a small shuttle hidden away behind stacks of cargo crates and barrels that never moved in the farthest corner of the bay. Its complement was full, and had been kept so for more than fifteen years now. Nolan checked the manifest manually anyways. Dane Fitzpatrick had been useful in maintaining that craft with tacit discretion for a long time, but there was no room for mistakes in the last hour.

"Have you decided where you will go yet?" the head archivist asked, hanging back near the shuttle's open hatch while Weir performed a similar check on all the internal systems. The older man had recomposed himself for the most part. He was still bent over and looking like he could barely hold up under his own weight, however. Nolan glanced back, briefly, while he worked.

"Dreggor's Door," he told the other, entering commands and hovering over consoles. The portholes at the front of the craft opened up into empty space and the glittering Rift. "We can lose ourselves in the crowds there for a time."

"And what if they anticipate you fleeing Riftwatch at the first sign of trouble?" Thaddeus probed.

"Perhaps," Nolan said, continuing. "Or they'll assume that either whatever agent they had here did the job and finished it, or that we would be tied up worrying about her safety. In all cases, they could not expect us to react so quickly as this." He went to work strapping the unconscious girl now into one of the racks in the back.

"You are assuming, of course," the other pressed with an arched brow, hanging on the rear hatch still, "that they are not as clever or as prepared as you. Or that they did not spend the same twenty years plotting every move the other side would make when the time came," he chided. And Weir looked up at him over the girl.

"I know that."

"This might be a game," the old man added after a moment. "But that does not mean you have to play by the same rules. Whoever has finally come for you - they undoubtedly will not."

"You know that there are no rules, Thaddeus," he told the other as he finished up. His old fingers flew along until he was satisfied with every last detail. The course had been fixed and plotted for years, but it only led somewhere likely and sensible. He had never intended to use it as anything more than a distraction for someone who might have gotten clever with him. No, the real destination would come in transit where it was far less likely to be traced. He had taken steps long ago to make sure of that.

The older man left it at that. He studied Weir for a few moments more. Then he turned away with a small smile crinkling his craggy face.

"I wish you luck, Nolan," he said with a wave of his hand over his shoulder as he started slowly, unsteadily away. "Take good care of yourself." The rear hatch began to swing shut to a soft mechanical whine. "Do it for an old man with few friends left."

"Thank you," Weir told him through the shrinking port. He did not join him in that wave. "I don't think we will see each other again."

The last, the other did not hear. The hatch swallowed him up whole.

He had lied to Thaddeus about Dreggor's Door. It was necessary.

Nolan returned to the pilot's chair and strapped himself in. The shuttlebay port closed behind them too. It jarred the craft, and the girl in bed in the back. She stirred at the abruptness of it.

"Where are we going?" she mumbled without opening her eyes, still mostly asleep. Her fastenings kept her bound tightly in place.

Nolan glanced back over one shoulder.

"Somewhere safe."

It was all he said. She fell out of it again after that, and he turned back to the controls. The shuttle broke free, shooting forward into empty space, and they left the station behind without another thought.


	18. 117 Thirty Hours

Weir got the message within five hours of leaving Riftwatch station. It took three minutes to plot the new course, and another thirty hours to reach Brekke Transit Hub near the Dreggoran epicycle. No parting farewells from those they had known and grown old with for twenty years. No final words to betray them before they even started. Just the way it had to be. The girl was not pleased, though.

It was almost a day before Evelyn regained consciousness, and then it was only enough to wonder groggily aloud again where she was and what had happened. Thaddeus had skimmed her comatose mind enough to prompt her body into a hyperaccelerated rate of healing and repair, but it had taken its toll. She was at a loss for what happened after two men ambushed her in the old maintenance tunnels back on the station.

Nolan was content to leave it that way, though the information might have proven to be of some use. The less she knew, the better and more protected she was. It was not as if she was in much of a position to fight him on the matter either. That did not stop her curious mind from wandering, however, and submitting him to a barrage of meddling questions.

She woke up starving and dehydrated from her accelerated recovery despite his best efforts to make her eat and drink while still only semi-conscious. A little mind-probing to that effect was mere child's play. Her metabolism had been overloaded, and she consumed all that she could manage to get her hands on in a short period of time before collapsing back to sleep from fatigue. She managed to start the interrogation before it took her.

He deflected her questions and insinuated to her that the whole affair was just some sort of temporary, long-awaited sabbatical from the station. In her addled state of mind and lack of reliable short-term memory, the implications were subtle and strong enough to make sense to her without much effort. He acted as if nothing were amiss but her and that befuddled state and she accepted it at that. Eagerly even. It spared him some of the more difficult questions about their circumstances to evade.

As soon as she was more fully awake, the trip fell into a brief routine of idle questions about his plans and half-lamented whimsy over leaving everyone on Riftwatch behind. Despite her fragile condition, Evelyn continued to chatter excitedly about it all without the faintest idea of what he was really about or why. And Nolan buried himself in his thoughts about that very thing, barely leaving the pilot's chair for the entire thirty hours.

He hardly ate, and didn't sleep. The girl must have started to suspect by the time they reached the hub, even though she had been asleep for most of it. Her excitement abated too quickly, and she turned to studying him when she thought he wasn't paying attention instead. He was always paying attention. And he made a note to himself to hide his preoccupation better in the coming days.

The Brekke Transit Hub changed from a distant, unmoving speck against the black to a floating spire in a matter of hours. And Evelyn could hardly take her eyes off it once it came into view.

"What _is_ that?" she demanded from the front of the craft with her face all but pressed flat into the porthole. It interrupted his thoughts while he draped himself over the pilot's console, and she had to twist back around to get his attention. He glanced at the distant station, then at her, and finally back down to the console again.

"Our first stop," was all he said. Not that the girl would have left it at that.

"There?" she stabbed a finger eagerly at the transit hub in the porthole. "We're going there?" Her head bobbed incredulously. "We're getting on _that_ there?"

Nolan ignored the question, still pondering one of several critical decisions he had to make. It wasn't as if another station should have been so exciting to her. He might have supposed she had never even seen Riftwatch from the exterior, however. And Evelyn was transfixed on the thing.

"Are there a lot of people onboard?" she pressed, eyes wide and mouth agape as she stood there wondering at the apparent novelty of it all.

"Yes."

"From the planets, you think?"

Again. "Yes."

He tried to get back to his thoughts and planning, but it was impossible with the way she continued firing off inane questions about this and that and everything. Infuriating, even. Especially considering how much was at stake. He had to remind himself, though, with an effort, that she had never known anything beyond Riftwatch in her entire life. Not so, for him.

They had to wait some time outside the transit hub's docking facilities while a port freed up for them to come aboard. Brekke was not as large as Geise, more obscure yet still crowded enough for his purposes. The place was just a minor departure point between several of the surrounding outposts and minor colonies, with a few larger ships frequenting it for the express purpose of ferrying travelers to Dreggor's Door. He could see one of them now, hanging down beneath the station on a long pylon. The girl seized on that soon enough, and wouldn't be quiet about it for some time.


	19. 118 The Best Laid Plans

A few more hours passed, but Evelyn hardly wore herself out. By the time someone from the docking authority authorized them to come aboard, Nolan had a headache that was making him edgier than he had already been. He snapped at the girl once or twice as they finally disembarked, but it lost its bite in the loudness of the crowds that greeted them. They might have dampened her spirits too, being some of the dirtiest, most unkempt people she must have ever seen - but it was hard to tell. He knew it was not the most welcome sight to his own eyes after so many years away.

"Evelyn! Stay near me."

She had started off almost immediately and he had to rein her in like a small child. The look she gave him back over her shoulder was about as petulant. He snatched her hand firmly in his and dragged her along behind him.

The crowd was hard to push through, it was so thick down by the docking bays. They couldn't help being jostled by people who had more filth and diseases than Nolan cared to think about. Riftwatch had been a clean, controlled place. The irony of suddenly succumbing to something simple after all that time did not sit well with him at all. The less reputable hubs toward the periphery like that didn't have good scrubbers.

He got them on an elevator to the upper decks first. That was even more unpleasant than the docking areas they left behind. He suffered several more minutes squashed together with more of the system's vagrants than he could have hoped for to get to a free terminal on the promenade decks.

"Wait right here," he told the girl with a harsh eye when they got there. She played irritated and impatient with him, folding her arms and glancing wistfully about. He just rounded on the terminal, however, and started with his message.

It took a few minutes to refamiliarize himself with that antiquated piece of technology and get the message out. Despite the abruptness of the whole affair, matters were still going according to plan and on schedule. Not that he had left much room for doubt. He'd had more than twenty years to prepare for that moment after all. More than enough time to get it right.

But never without a few doubts.

"Evelyn."

The girl jumped when he turned around and called her name. She had still been standing there behaving - a small miracle. Her attention had been elsewhere, though, and he had to snap her out of it.

"What were you looking at?"

He came up beside her, glancing the way she'd been staring. It had not been the whimsical fancy of the past minutes or several hours. And he could worry about so abrupt a shift in her out here.

"Nothing," she shook her head quickly, though, dismissing it. "I just ... I thought I saw someone."

"Come on." He took her by the arm and started pulling her away again. A few looks over his shoulder were not wasted in his wary concerns.

There was no incident as they reached another elevator down to the transport ship they would be taking. The girl sobered some, but still bubbled over intermittently with that enthusiasm. And, for a few moments, with Riftwatch behind them and the rest of the system ahead, Nolan could almost entertain the fantasy of that turning into a real holiday of sorts for her, with home being safe and waiting up for them to return. He had lost touch in two decades, and it left him nostalgic. But he crushed that sentimentalism in his head quickly enough.

A few more hours as they waited to board the passenger ship _Menhir_ bled a little bit more of that excitement right out of the girl. She was downright manageable by the time they were allowed in. And the accomodations she had to look forward to were little better than that of a refugee camp, buried in the bowels of the ship. Anything else would have meant registering with the passenger manifest. And that was something he would not do.

So they made it on board with little incident. Unnoticed. Ignored by fellow passengers and crew alike, with the odd exception or two for their superior health and dress - exceptions that he made mental note to keep an eye on if necessary. It all went just as he had planned. And, just as he had planned, they were underway and flying fast toward Lyricum within forty-eight hours of the other side's first move.


	20. 119 Desperate and Deranged

"Where are we going?"

The girl's tone was deadpan. Sullen, even. It brought Nolan back out of his reverie. She turned her head to look up at him when he didn't answer right away, and caught him staring.

"What?"

He shook his head and glanced away. He had been digging up a lot of old memories of late. Too much that should remain buried. It was distracting him from what needed to be done.

They had been crowded in the lower decks for more than a day now. Packed in with huddled masses of poor travelers dredged up from what must have been every desolate hole in the region. There was a reason he had chosen Riftwatch all those years ago, and it wasn't just because of the old charlatan prophecies. He enjoyed the solitude. There was no space to think in this festering cell.

It was necessary. Just like everything he had had to do for the past two decades. He kept reminding himself of that, especially when he looked down into that dusky face with those familiar almond eyes.

"So," the girl was speaking again. She huffed out a heavy breath through her teeth. "Are you going to tell me where we're going or not?"

Sitting in the bowels of an obsolete old transport cruiser for almost two days had drained her enthusiasm to next to nothing. She had gotten a sarcastic attitude with him over the past twenty-four hours. A combination of several things, he was sure. Not to forget her little explosion at the docking platform when she found out they wouldn't be going back to the Riftwatch for a long time. He had been remiss in letting that slip out of frustration, and it had soured her quite a bit. But, in the end, he assumed it was just because he refused to tell her most of anything she did not need to know. Which was a lot.

The cruiser would be half a week to Dreggoran, with them stuck down there the whole while even though that was not their destination. Evelyn was hunched over next to him on the floor, lost amidst the throngs of squatting, coughing passengers. She looked almost as miserable as they did now, if not nearly so unwashed. It became an effort not to feel more sympathy for her and that situation he was putting her through.

It was necessary.

"You'll know when we get there," he told her. And she grumbled out another irritable groan at that. He ignored it.

"Of _course_ I will. But I want to know _now_ ..."

Nolan just hunched in deeper upon himself. The next several days would be long and insufferable, he knew. And matters would only escalate when they were done. All of a sudden, he had so much to do with so little time left to do it. It was a crushing weight that he had known so long ago that he could not escape. Ironic how the decision had seemed so simple back then. They always did.

But now ...

Now, he looked down at that innocent girl beside him all grown up and ...

Well. None of it seemed so easy anymore. He could still remember the day he took her away.

"Evelyn."

She rounded back on him once more, frowning.

"Yeah?"

He opened his mouth to tell her something. Maybe it was being in that place, alone, and so far from everything else that mattered just then. Maybe it was in seeing that look in profile on her face that reminded him so much of the mother she never knew. Maybe. But he would never know.

Something else snapped inside of his head. And it hurled every other thought away.


	21. 120 Black Manifest

It was several, long moments before Nolan stirred again. The girl's frown turned anxious and worried as he sat staring off into space and through her like she wasn't even there. His face went white, and he started to shake.

"Dad ...?"

When she reached to touch him, he gasped back to life so suddenly she jumped herself. It took him another moment to steady his trembling hands. But then he was digging them into her arm.

"We need to get out of here!" he hissed in her face.

She opened her mouth to say something, but he never gave her the chance. Bounding back up to his feet, he hauled her up bodily with him. She might have cried out in surprise at the suddenness of it, but it was the furthest thing from Nolan's mind just then. He could _feel_ the universe coming apart around them.

Like he had only one time before in his entire life.

They had to climb over the destitute hordes to get to the other side of the cabin. Those ones barely seemed to notice. He didn't. A lot of coughing, low whispers, and a few children crying. He ignored it, pulling the girl along and stomping right through now as if it were nothing.

In a few minutes, they undoubtedly would be.

"Uh ..."

He hit the doors and yanked her through without another word. They were in a corridor then, leading back toward the deck ports where they had boarded - where there were ladder and stairwells to the upper decks. None of the poor running in the bowels of the ship were supposed to be allowed out, though, and a uniformed man came at them immediately with a heavy cudgel and an angry look.

"No one's allowed out of the aft lounge during transit," he started to say. Disinterested. Almost bored. He was used to dealing with the kinds of people stuffed together back in the hold behind. But Nolan didn't give him a chance to do much else.

The air was abruptly thick, thunderheads flashing across Weir's brow. It crackled with life, slowing everything around them down to a perceived crawl. Then the guard leapt up abruptly from the deck and threw himself over into the bulkhead, out cold in an instant without another sound. The man slumped down to the floor on his side. And the girl stared, wide-eyed, at that body on the ground.

"What ... what did you do _that_ for?" she shrieked at him in surprise. He had been very careful never to let her see him use any form of pyschokinesis on another human being before. It was a shock that could not be helped.

"Keep moving," was all Nolan said, not bothering to answer, or wait for her to pick up pace again. He just snatched her hand back, hauling her along again down the hall. She twisted around, eying the guard's body as they stalked away, leaving him quickly behind.

Weir gave a few more security that got in the way his violent sleep treatment as they made their way through the lower decks and up. A cold sweat sheathed his face, and he had to grit his teeth to make himself go on when they reached a stairwell. It ascended farther up than he needed it to, but he was having a hard time keeping his thinking straight. Not with that rending sound like the gnashing of teeth on space itself so deafening in his ears. A lesser man might have clawed them out. But a lesser man would not have been as attuned as he was.

A blessing, and a curse. For once in his long life, he wasn't entirely sure just why.

The girl was scared. Not that there was anything else he could do for her. He was scared himself, and with much more good reason to be. He knew everything that she did not, and there were a good many reasons to worry about whether or not they would even survive the next few minutes. That he had somehow been outmaneuvered was not lost on him in the slightest.

And that was why, in some ways, it was a godsend when they reached the next corridor and they were suddenly not alone anymore. No guards came at them this time. They had already crossed into the upper decks. No. Instead, their bodies were strewn all over the floor.


	22. 121 Mice and Men

A man stood in the midst of those bodies ahead of them. A handful of guards lined the floor - too many for anything but a response to an alarm. And as if the prove that fact, the lights dimmed overhead and sirens abruptly blared all around.

Darkness fell around that figure like a cloak as it pulled a black, folding blade free from the last of the men that had apparently come to stop it. The guard collapsed in an unceremonious heap to the floor with his unkempt, pompous uniform ripped open in front and behind. The rest had all been bled out onto the deck and left for dead. The figure forgot them as soon as Weir burst into the corridor. And with the flick of a wrist, that folding blade flipped back up and in on itself, segment by segment, until it was no bigger than a knife.

The girl came up behind in a rush, barging right into Nolan. He snatched her by the arm and jerked her around behind him.

There were a few moments then, while he and that figure just stood across the bloodied corridor from each other and did not speak a word. That other man looked at him, and Weir took in everything in a moment's glance. The events of the past few minutes were evidently clear to him by the position and state of those bodies.

The other had been caught in that security checkpoint - by intention, most likely. He had antagonized the guards, drawing more in to apprehend him and allowing them to encircle. They had been armed, but the blast marks along the deck and bulkheads around suggested not a shot fired had had the opportunity to find its mark. They had died in a ring around him. A single, hand-less corpse meant at least one had managed to get the weapon pointed at him.

That figure stood there unharmed. He was big with muscle beneath a long coat and hood, and there was a glint of something there in the red light when Nolan looked. For a moment, the man's eyes beneath his hood were on Evelyn and they glimmered too.

"You know why I'm here," the man down the corridor uttered then. His voice was low, and rich without a trace of fear or concern.

There were no burn marks on any of the bodies, or evidence of extreme blunt trauma to indicate pyschokinetics. Deep lacerations were the telling mark.

His primary armament was that melee weapon then, which was more than manageable assuming no other hidden assets.

"Give me the girl, old man," the man said. He didn't offer a trade for Nolan's life. It was obvious to both of them that there would be none. So the statement was purely for effect. On the girl.

"_What_?"

She squeaked out from behind, giving the man an incredulous, terror-stricken look before trying to squeeze herself even further out of sight behind. The hooded man didn't pay her any more notice, but the eager anticipation in the air was seething so thickly that Weir could taste it like a physical thing.

The life pods were in the foredecks. Closest to the registered passengers' quarters., and right ahead through that man and his body count. He could have backtracked and found another route around behind, but Nolan did not need that psychic screeching in his ears to tell him that they had no time left for flight.

He thought he knew then just what he had stumbled into. All those years, and he had always suspected the other side was sure to come for him and the girl one day. He knew their tricks, and the way their minds worked. Knew how to beat them. After all, he had been one of them before the girl.

Now, that time was here. Wasn't it?

"I will take her from you," the man opened his mouth again. The threat was drawn out slowly. "You know I will." Inexorable. Like certainty in death.

It was an eventuality he was prepared for - those plans being intercepted at this stage. But one man could not stop him. No, it was the rip they had opened up in space and time that he knew was the real ploy.

They never should have had the power to do such a thing. He turned it over and over in his mind as he waited for that man to make his move before all the pieces had settled into place in Weir's head. How had they figured it out? Two decades of isolation with an overweaned will and the greatest expertise in the entire system, and he had not yet determined how to tear down the walls between existences. They couldn't have done it. It was impossible.

They couldn't have.

Unless ...

Realization dawned on him so abruptly it nearly knocked him back off his feet. That man seemed to be waiting for it, content to just watch until he saw it in Nolan's eyes. And as soon as he did, that hooded man started for them.


	23. 122 The Mighty are Fallen

"You ..."

Nolan Weir barely more than breathed the word as the man strode purposefully toward them at the other end of the corridor. Recognition. Surprise. And a second's trace of uncertainty in the face of that particular eventuality come to pass instead.

It lasted a second too long.

The familiarity was in the color of the other's mind. It was painted in black-ochre tones across the brittle fabric of the physical world about - that fabric pulsing and reverberating shrilly like the screams of spectres from a force strong enough to make it seem a hair's breadth away from shattering completely. All too soon ... he knew that it would.

That devil's manifestation didn't matter.

Nolan threw a hand out - a catalyst for his mind's will, and nothing more. Then he threw everything he had into crushing that man into bloody pulp.

It was a mess. The sight would undoubtedly traumatize the girl in all the wrong ways, but it could not be helped. He could not allow himself to be stopped so soon. Such a thing would have been disastrous and all but undo over twenty years of planning and work.

It was with some small amount of surprise, however, when that bone-crushing, mind-splintering force did little more than slow the other man down.

He grunted like a stricken beast - then kept on coming. That surprise turned to shock as Weir bludgeoned him again, and again, and again. All to not even a tenth of the intended effect.

The man was immune to psychokinesis, but for a pathetic little flutter of that hood wrapped around his head. Impossible. But he continued to be so right up until he flicked that black, folding blade of his back out to full length and drove it right through Nolan's stomach.

There was a gasp of surprise. He wasn't sure if it was his or the girl's. But he looked down to see the hilt buried almost inside him. It gave him pause.

For a moment, his world narrowed down to fine sights, sounds, and sensations. Still, that roaring rip raged above them all like vicious white noise in the black.

That other man's face started to twist.

He saw the action come before it did. A subtle change in inflection on the surface of the other's mind. That one towered over Nolan with certainty in the old man's death. A lesser man would have succumbed. A lesser man would have been paralyzed, his mind broken on that blade along with body.

Nolan turned all his will back outward. And this time, he turned it upon himself.

He flung his body back off the steel and into the girl and the bulkhead.

The other man growled, stomping another step forward as Weir and his daughter collapsed to the ground in twin heaps. That blade came up again, thrusting after for the kill. Nolan glanced at it, and it flung up out of the monster's hands.

It was not protected.

The other man followed the steel with his eyes as it dangled above his head. It whipped around and thrust down at him instead.

The demon dodged, slipping around his own blade. It came at him again, and again.

"Evelyn! Run!" Nolan shouted over at her as she just sat there, stunned. She froze up in horror, staring down at whatever hole had opened up in his gut. He let the blade drop out of his conscious hold for a moment - long enough to pick the girl right up off the deck with his mind and start her ahead down the corridor.

"Get off the ship!"

The other man managed to snatch his blade back in that moment, but the girl skittered past him with the force of Nolan's mind. And then she was running as far and as fast as she could.

Away from him.


	24. 123 Demons in the Dark

I ran.

I ran harder and faster than I ever had in my life. Corridors whipped past, blurring together in a messy haze of gray metal bulkheads. The world became nothing but shoes on steel, thumping blood and tears, and me sucking down each sobbing breath like it was my last. I didn't stop until I caught something with my foot. And then I was smacking the deck hard face-first with my forehead.

Things spun for a while after that, and I had a hard time thinking. Not that I was really interested in doing just that. I lay there on the ground like a corpse - a shivering, sobbing corpse. And everything started to close in black around me.

"_Run_."

I jerked back up to my feet with a start. Instantly. Leaden, flailing limbs flopped out around me and I slapped the wall ahead with my whole body. That voice was in my head, but it was Dad's. I couldn't stop. Not yet. Not with Dad alone back there. They weren't after him.

They weren't after ... _him_.

There was a corpse on the floor.

It took a long time to notice. I think that was what I had tripped over. There was blood all over the deck, and on my hands, making them stick. I tried to wipe it off on my pants, staring dumbly at that body. It had been crawling the wrong way.

There was too much blood, and I backed away. Numb. Whoever it had been, they had been hacked to pieces. There wasn't much more to it than that. Just ... Hacked. To. Pieces.

Someone screamed.

My thumping head jerked that way - not the way back to Dad and those others. I didn't know anything about that ship or where I was now, but I noticed the red-black trail leading back around a corner where that dead man must have dragged himself from. The lights flickered above me.

There were more of them than just that one murdering psychopath - whoever they were. They must have gotten ahead of me and Dad. But there was still that one behind. I think I laughed a little at that, but it came out sounding shrill and insane in my ears.

The choice was too easy, and I hated myself more than anything for it just then. So much that it hurt. There was nothing that I wanted to do more just then than let myself break down into tiny little pieces on the floor. But I kept seeing Dad's face whenever I closed my eyes. So I went forward. I didn't even look back.

I followed that trail of blood. There wasn't much else to do. Slowly. Quietly. My shoes squelched fresh gore on the deck and I felt bile in my throat. I was sweating, and cold. Every muscle was pulled so tight I was sure it would just snap. But somehow I reached the corner even so. I had to keep going.

I peeked around, holding what little I could of my breath. It still came out in short, sharp bursts. That scream had come from there.

Another corridor opened up beyond. This one had doors marching along to either side of it - passenger cabins. It was the upper decks now, I think. Nothing like the horrible open bay we had been in below. But here all the doors were open.

And there were bodies.

Everywhere.

And I froze there, staring at them. The breath finally caught in my throat.

Men. Women. Children. It was hard to tell. They had been diced up and butchered like raw meat. Pieces lay everywhere. On the walls. The ceiling. It was death like those guards down below, only worse - much, much worse. Someone had gotten more personal with these, right up inside and thrashing bone and sinew apart. Some of the pieces were even still recognizable.

I would have thrown up then, but something was moving at the end of the hall.

I only caught a glimpse. There was a bloody, wailing mass of a girl on the ground ahead through the door at the end. Something lumbered over to her, and it made a sound as it scraped her up off the ground. A sound like ripping flesh and crackling bone. Like everything horrible that had ever come out my nightmares on the cusp of waking that I could never remember. That I would never let myself remember. I only caught a glimpse, and that was all I ever needed.

I did throw up then. I puked into a bloody, helpless hand.

Somehow, my back was against the wall again, and I was out of sight. I felt like my lungs had seized up, both legs stiff and stuck at awkward angles to the floor. My knees shook, and I just sat there, unable to move. Everything was ice, chills creeping up like tiny talons along my spine. Another second like that - and all the lights flickered out.

I might have cried again there in the dark. I know I laughed. An insane, helpless laugh. But in the end, I just squeezed my eyes shut.

Every dream came screaming back from where I had buried it, howling and clawing right through my brain. Every hook, claw, and talon. Every severed head, punctured gut, and limb torn free. Every ounce of blood splattered everywhere. Everything that I had kept hidden and locked away from the waking world and Dr. Sweeney's probing interrogations. It all flashed in my head in an instant. But it wasn't real. It wasn't ... _real_.

"It's not real."

I took a deep, shuddering breath. Somehow. And opened my eyes again, slowly. Emergency lights had come on, painting the passage with specks of dim red. They didn't do much at all. But it was enough, for a moment just then, not to be lost in the dark down there.

When I came back, though, something very real loomed right next to my head.


	25. 124 Dead Meat

My legs gave out.

Even before the rush and gargling scream. I collapsed down, that thing whipping something of itself into the wall that sliced a hole right through it. I heard the metal rend, and my heart tried to burst - but I flipped over onto my stomach first.

Another wet howl. I threw myself up to my feet, flying, stumbling back down the first corridor. Instinct, and reflex. My own body sliced up into pieces flashed in my mind so suddenly I forgot I was already moving.

Something else snapped in just over my back. And again into the ground where my feet had been.

I hit another corner - a side hallway I never saw running before. I lashed out and caught it with both hands, slipping on the dead man's blood still on the floor. That took me clean off my feet again, but not on down the hall. I yanked myself over into the other hallway. That thing slashed in right behind.

It screamed at me. That fleshy, mouthless scream. I tripped up a few desperate steps, blood slick on my shoes. Those emergency lights didn't do anything for the hallway but outline the walls, and they were out in some places. Covered up, maybe. By bodies, blood, or something else - I couldn't tell. There was only red-tinged black ahead and that thing behind.

I charged the other end. Hard. But I didn't get far. There _were_ bodies on the floor. And it took me another second, as I slid wildly ahead into another wall, to realize that it wasn't water making the floor so wet.

When I came back up, that thing was screaming right in my face.

It slashed something at me. My arm sliced open and whatever it was punched a hole in the deck. I spun around on my back in the blood on the ground, and both feet went flying. One managed to hit the thing somewhere.

It hit me again. Something blunt this time because it sent me sliding away down the hall. I slapped the deck and leapt back up to my feet, stumbled a few steps, and slipped into a door. It was shut tight.

I froze for one, terrible moment. That warbling started up again behind me, charging. Maybe it had never stopped. Everything went to cold, shivering ice again, and I tried to scream. But I just didn't have it in me.

Then I saw it. The door was open.

Just a little.

I didn't care. I flung myself at the hole without a second thought except for the murderous howl flying at me fast from behind. And got stuck partway through.

Maybe I looked back. The thing was just a big, black splotch against the blotted, dull lights. It was a terrible mistake. Pretty soon, it doubled up on itself and filled out the whole corridor.

I sucked in, squeezed, and screamed. Hands scrabbling on both sides, I smeared blood all over the doors. Panic reached a fever pitch as my fingers slid all over. I didn't look back again. Couldn't. Even as it gargled another vicious shriek at me, I clawed my way through the door. It swiped that razor-sharp something for my head.

And then I was through.

I got halfway down the next corridor before I realized it, though.

Everything swirled around me in a blinding rush of black and red. I never stopped - barely slowed. But that thing was still caught in the door. I didn't look back, but I could hear it slashing at metal and screaming at me, trying to get through.

I glanced down at my arm as I stumbled on - at the blood dribbling down the length of it. It shook so hard it was hard to see in the dim light. And I had no idea how bad it was. But I couldn't care just then anyways.

Dad's voice was in my head. And I just kept on running in the dark.


	26. 125 Flotsam

At some point, the gravity went out. I only noticed because I was suddenly tumbling into the air.

My whole body spun. Some blood from the deck bobbed along with me. And when I came back around vertical once more, a headless corpse did too.

We both hit a wall. I kicked out frantically with both feet, and it whirled away. I did too, whipping through black space. I smacked the bulkhead with my head and saw stars. It was the brightest the world had been in the last few minutes.

The rest of it came back. Slowly.

I had to get off that ship. That's what Dad had said right before he ... I had to get off that ship. But I had no idea where I even was.

There were more of those things. I could hear them. There must have been a lot of people onboard because the screaming never ended. Whenever it died off somewhere, someone else took up the cry - swallowed up in the darkened depths of the ship. And if that dark didn't get me killed, my eyes would. I couldn't keep tears from blinding them.

I swam forward, lashing out with my blood-stained hands for anything along the way and pulling myself along through the black and low, red light. My chest shook - the only sound in the dark around me. I couldn't make it stop. I tried.

I hit another door. Spun myself around. And grabbed at the crack between them. I started prying them open, still wracked with shaking sobs that wouldn't go away. Just enough to peek into the next passageway.

Something leapt at my face as soon as I did.

That skin-ripping scream. I choked on my tongue, or else I would have screamed too. It slashed at me through the crack. Something caught in my side, and even more blood was spilling into the air.

I flung back. It howled, rearing and clawing at the door like a rabid animal. And it wasn't alone. There was a whole other cabin out there. Not another corridor. A dozen of those things were suddenly flying and ripping at the metal between them and me.

The door bent, huge dents popping back in places. That warbling scream turned into a crescendo, making my ears bleed. I screamed too this time.

I guess I was dead. I saw Dad and that man in my head, bleeding out on the floor from a length of gleaming steel blacker than night. I saw all those bodies too, in pieces all over everything. And I saw myself. That ship ... it was just one big, bloody tomb for all of us.

My body floated over, bawling in the dark while those things tore open the door from the other side. I might have tried to run, but I got nowhere hanging there in midair. Instead, my hand found the gun in my jacket pocket.

It was still there. I lost everything and everyone else. But, somehow, I still had that. And I stabbed it out at those things without another thought.

I yanked on the trigger, and ...

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

That empty clicking sounded like deafening despair to my ears. I stared at the pistol while razored limbs whipped out in a frenzied mass of tentacles at the door. Howling and snarling and teeth like claws snapping bone. Metal groaned, and howled too. It started to finally come apart altogether.

I think I screamed again, shrieking fury and helplessness at that whole bloody mess. But no sound came out this time. Or they just drowned me out. I might have just thrown the pistol at them too. But I remembered something then. For once in my entire life ... I remembered something someone had told me right when it mattered.

I clicked the safety off. Bertram had switched it back on.

And I fired.

This time, light flashed bright in the dark.

That first shot went wide. It seared the door with a black mark and a whiff of ash. The next was better, though. And so was the next after that.

Bolts of fire hammered into the fleshy space between those doors. The things kept howling and screaming their throat-rending screams out at me. One fell back. Maybe. It was hard to tell in the dark, they thrashed so much. For all the good it seemed to do, those things barely noticed. They just kept coming.

Holes appeared all over the door. It was already bent out of shape, folding in at me. It started to give way.

There were too many of them. I realized that ... eventually. Wild-eyed and firing blindly into that murderous frenzy to get at me and rip me apart. Then I spun myself back around to swim away.

Doorframes. Floor grates. Emergency light fixtures. It didn't matter. I clawed, scratched, and snatched at anything with some purchase. Anything that got me further away back down the hall from that blood-mad howling. Too slow. I was just too slow. It chased me all the way down the corridor into the next. And that was where I finally heard it.

The worst sound I had ever heard in my life.

... The sound of that door ripping into pieces.


	27. 126 Dark Corners

The faceless screaming tore at the walls all up the red and black passage at me. Clicking on metal as they suddenly rushed headlong after, filling up the dark behind. I didn't look back. There was some kind of desk beside me in the corridor - an open space in the dead air beside. I swung myself over and through without another thought, and slid underneath.

There were a few seconds then where I couldn't hear anything but the blood rushing through my head. So loud it drowned everything else out. Those things tore down the hallway in slow motion, and my world narrowed down to the rabid thumping in my chest.

I closed my eyes to shut it out.

And saw that dead forest from my last dream instead.

Those men were torn apart, shredded by shadow. Firebolts firing wildly and running desperate in the fog. For a moment it was those people on board that ship instead, as they fled screaming through the halls being butchered into pieces all along the decks. I saw it like it all happened in an instant right in front of me then. It didn't feel like a dream. Now it felt real.

My eyes opened again.

That throatless screaming was fading away down the corridor. It had passed right by me and I could hear it lashing out at the bulkheads back the way I had come, echoing like a waking nightmare. I could almost breathe again, and the shivering wasn't so violent anymore. I eased clammy palms against the underside of the desk where I floated and swallowed hard. My whole body shuddered.

Something slammed into the desktop above me.

I jerked, sucking in air. Then froze up, wide-eyed and staring at that metal like I could see through to the other side. Hands still flat against the underbelly, I felt it strain and shake with that thing on top it. For one horrifying moment ... I waited for it to come down for me there.

But it didn't. I managed to slowly edge my head around into the small cubby-room I was in behind that desk. The breath stuck fast in my throat again, and the low, red lights from the corridor painted shadows on the wall. One of them was huge, sitting right on top of that open space, and moving.

I waited, and listened. There was nothing else to do, struck frozen stiff beneath the desk. Clicking. This one didn't scream at me. Instead there was the wet sound of somethng ripping and scratching just on the other side of that metal between us. Inches away from my face.

It took me some time. But, eventually, I noticed the man-like shape underneath that bulk of shadow twitching against the wall. At least, I noticed the head shape sticking out to one side of it. And I watched the shades play against the wall as it dug into that corpse and chewed it to fleshy pieces.

A hand flopped over, hanging just over the edge of the desk and trickling blood down its fingers. Two of them were missing. A woman's hand. I fixed on that for a long time while the thing ripped into skin and bone and organ. I fixed on that for a long time after the thing was finished and clicked away after the others.


	28. 127 Jetsam

I laid there too long. It was hard not to, floating listlessly and hidden beneath that desk. Just like any other corpse onboard that ship right then. Just like that corpse in pieces right above me. Maybe they wouldn't find me. I almost felt safe there in the dark. Just another corpse.

Like Dad.

Something caught my eye - a sign on the wall. The letters were illuminated in that same red emergency light, but they were covered in black blood. I could just make them out.

EMERGENCY LIFEPODS.

Dad had said to get off the ship. I was happy where I was right then, though, aside from that dead, wet stink. They couldn't find me here. I was safe and hidden.

Dad's voice was in my head, and so was the sound that black, folding blade punching through his guts. Like an insane little whispering nagging at the back of my skull. I had to get off that ship. I had to.

Eventually, I managed to drag myself out from under there.

Everything was slow. The chill in the lifeless air was not from the cold. I shivered, and twitched, jerking at every tiny shadow that caught in the corner of my eye as I pulled myself around the corpse atop the desk and out into the room. I didn't look at the body. I just swam away.

A hand caught the door next to that sign. Shaking, and looking little better than the one splayed out back on top of the desk. I wedged bloody fingers in between and started pushing and pulling. They were numb, and next to useless. Still, I managed to get it open and not cry out at the floating corpse of a small boy that attacked me inside. I yanked it out of the way. Then I was staring down a ladder well.

One of those things scurried past down below.

I twisted back with a jerk, squeezing my eyes shut and choking on my tongue.

I sucked in a few ragged breaths there in the dark. Waited. And when I looked back - it was gone.

Or maybe not. I hesitated, trembling there alone. It could have been just waiting down there for me. Chewing on another corpse and hoping for some fresher meat to rend in two.

I was missing my hiding spot under the desk already.

But Dad was there again. Whispering for me to go, out of his broken body on the floor. I took a deep, tremulous breath.

A moment later, I upended, pulling the firebolt back out and myself down toward the bottom.

My hands were still shaking when I peeked out from the ceiling. The knuckles were white around the gun in one, fingers in a death grip on the pistol. I didn't see any sign of those things. But I could still hear them. Fortunately, for me, another of those signs pointed to the lifepods in a corridor just ahead.

I pushed my way, still trembling all over, out of the ladder well. And something snatched at my hand.

I screamed. I also twisted around and nearly lost the gun. Somehow, I got it between us, though. And I would have fire too.

If it hadn't been Dad hanging there right then.

"Evelyn!"

I froze up, wide-eyed. Staring at that ghost hovering over me with the face of my dead father. It choked up some blood at me, rasping. Adding it to the rest of what covered me since slipping between the cracks of hell. But he tightened his grip on my arm like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to the world. The pain from that death-like grip felt real enough too.

How ...?

"Over there," he gasped out at me, pointing a feeble arm ahead. "Now!" And tried to push me that way. His guts were still leaking. I could see that now. There was a trail of droplets leading all the way back down that hall, pooling just outside the ladder well.

But I caught him then, pulling him close. There wasn't much else I could do, so I just started crying into his bloody coat. For a moment, I forgot anything and everything else but the feel of some life still left in that old man's body as I hugged it tight. For the first time, I ignored the sound of those things stalking the decks. But he just tried to drag me along anyways.

It forced me to sober up enough to realize that he couldn't do it. His face was shock-pale and bloodless. I looked up but he almost seemed to ignore me, clawing his way through the air toward those lifepods. He kept a death-grip around me, though. With a nauseous pit welling deep in my stomach, I just turned around and started helping him pull both of us that way.

I helped Dad inside one without a word. And we closed the hatch shut behind us.

"That console," he managed, directing me. For once, I just did what I was told, nodding tearfully as he coughed out the launch sequence. It was simple enough. And by the time we were done, the whole pod lurched. Then we were flying free.

I only had a small chance to see that ship before we boarded back at the station. But I got a good look at it up close as we jettisoned away, staring out bleary-eyed through the rear hatch porthole. Big enough for thousands of people. It was floating dead in space now on its side like some rotting fish. All dead now. All because of me.

I asked myself why, but I had no answer. I'm not sure why I'd think I would.

"Evelyn ..."

Dad's voice brought me back around. He could barely speak. Not that that stopped him. He stabbed me with those piercing eyes - filmy now - and made me listen.

"Plot these coordinates," he told me, and I followed along on the navigational computer while he listed them off haltingly from memory. His face twisted abruptly as he glanced over at the readouts, and the big black spot on his stomach wasn't leaking so much anymore. "They'll take you to Lyricum. It shouldn't be far ... not-not that far ..."

He started to drift away from me, eyes losing that hard light as they fell aside. I dove across the cramped compartment, though, and shook him back awake. He grimaced up at me, and started right in again without missing a beat.

"There is a low-orbit station there," he told me, fainter this time. "Jerod, and Alarra. Jerod ... and Alarra. You must find them there. R-repeat it ..."

"Wh-what?" I choked back.

"Repeat it to me. Evelyn."

I shook my head, but I did.

"J-Jerod. Alarra. O-on ... L-Lyricum," I managed.

His eyes began to droop again, and I clutched tighter, digging into his arms. I choked out his name, but he couldn't even look up at my tear-streaked face. And I couldn't think of anything else to say to make him.

"I hoped they wouldn't find you so soon," he mumbled on, not seeing me anymore. "I was so ... careful ..." He gagged abruptly. More blood spilled out into the air past his lips. "Years of planning ... cut short ... like this ...

"I should have told you more ..."

Wet, hacking coughs racked his old body then. He spit up blood, and I just tried not to get it right in my face. I was already drenched. I didn't want any more of his too.

"I'm so sorry, Evelyn," he managed at the last, between coughing and choking on his own words. For some reason, I was sure it wasn't me he was apologizing to. He didn't even know I was still there. Not anymore.

He rattled off a few more breaths, eyes squeezed shut. He didn't speak again after that. And neither did I. We both just waited until, eventually, he stopped breathing at all.

I felt the life go out of him. And then it was just me.


	29. 201 Theresa

"Theresa. Go home."

"But Ev just-"

"Now."

I stared at Ev's dad for a couple seconds, taken aback at the abruptness of it and swirling inside my own head for a couple seconds. I ... I really couldn't think of anything to say.

I don't know. How could he come barging in here and just -

What an _assh_-

-But it _was_ his home. I guess. So I finally just threw up my hands.

Ugh.

Whatever.

I pushed past him toward the front door, while he just stood there staring ahead at Ev like I didn't even exist anymore. So I got her attention one last time before I left and stabbed a finger at the back of her dad's head.

"You tell him," I mouthed at her. Then I flicked off the back of her dad's head before rounding back on the door.

I stopped there, though. Realization came at me in a rush, nearly knocking me back off my feet. Instead, I slowly turned back around.

That message couldn't have meant ...?

No.

No.

That was ... crazy.

Right?

But there was something in the way he was standing. I felt a cold dread come over me as he stared at Ev that way. They had said ...

But - Who? Who would want to come after her? I mean - _Ev_? Of all people ...

Unless ...

I practically ran out the door as soon as I turned back around. It slammed shut behind and I darted down the corridor into a corner around the bend. A quick once-over to make sure no one was looking at me, and I pulled out my pad. I had old Weir-do's secret inbox bookmarked and shortcutted. And I breathed a small sigh when I got in without a hitch this time. He hadn't figured out I'd cracked it or changed the encryption yet.

There was a new message in there, already read. I opened it up.

**Two are on Riftwatch already.** That was all it said.

What the ...?

Two _what_? Or did they really mean that-?

I went back and looked at the past messages too, just to be sure. I'd chanced upon Ev's dad's covert inbox while rooting through the mainframe a couple months ago, not even knowing it was his until I got inside. It had just looked interesting, seeing as _someone_ had gone through some trouble to hide it from anyone and everyone else. At first, though, it had been disappointingly routine and legitimate. Progress reports, research correspondence, and peer editorials. I had almost given up digging any deeper until I found some messages a few weeks back where he started talking about the 'other side', 'enemies', and using double-talk in messages with people without electronic signatures like spies from the vids.

It was just a little funny at first. I didn't pay much attention to it except to imagine stuffy, old Weir-do acting like some covert agent up in his ivory tower. The station could be boring as hell most of the time. Maybe that work addiction of his had been wearing him down more than people realized.

But then they had started talking about Ev.

Someone was after her. That's what the gist of it all was. I had read them over and over, until I was sure Weir-do would find me out. It took that long to be sure just what they meant, and still I couldn't believe it. Not until I saw that look in her dad's face before he kicked me out. He was serious.

There were people after Ev. And they were already _here_?

I glanced around, but no one was really paying me any attention there - crouched in my corner. Not a lot of people were out that night.

So, what was he going to do?

I thought about it. Maybe he'd go all hardcore and hunt down whoever was on the station coming for Ev. Maybe. But that wasn't really like old Weir. And they didn't say much about fighting those guys. Just staying one step ahead of them whenever they could.

Then it hit me.

There was a shuttle in loading bay thirteen. Most people didn't know, but it was old Weir-do's super secret, personal shuttle. I couldn't figure out if he ever left the station in it, but I had gotten inside once to look around because it never moved and no one ever talked about it down there. Very hush-hush and suspicious. So I figured it'd be interesting at least.

Nope.

But now ...

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Ev's dad was going to grab her and just take off. That's what he was going to do. They were going to leave the station. Maybe even for good.

I was halfway home before I even got past that thought inside my head. And I had already snuck past Bertram's room and almost finished packing a bag before I stopped to think about what I was doing.

What _was _I doing?

Ev was in trouble, right?

Yeah.

And I couldn't just let her go off all on her own, right?

Nope.

Okay, well it was settled then. Really, there wasn't any other choice. It wasn't like Ev could survive long without me around to keep an eye on her anyways. Old Weir-do could barely take care of himself. To be honest, really - I'd probably just end up taking care of them both.

So that it was it then. I rushed out the door with barely a scribbled note left in Bertram's inbox, and headed for bay thirteen. Some goodbye, I guess. I tried to call Ev along the way, but it didn't go through. Weird. The stupid automatic re-direct sent it over to her dad and I had to hang up in a hurry when I saw _that_ start to go through. But I didn't have time to worry about it. I had to get to that shuttle before they did.

Weir wouldn't have much liked seeing me there. Good thing I could get that shuttle open easy. No one noticed me as I snuck into the bay and around back to it - they were too busy and I was too quick. Once inside, I grabbed a few of the microcameras from my bag, planted them around the cabin, and hid myself inside the storage locker in the head. That shuttle was outfitted to be lived in for a bit, but I wasn't going to get much chance to be comfortable along the way just yet. So I took out my pad, hooked into the camera feeds, and-

Waited.


	30. 202 Stowed Away

I thought I was going to lose it by the end of that first day.

I had been stuck - _crammed_ into that tiny little locker. Folded up and stiff for what felt like forever! And everything was starting to ache. There were slits cut into the metal on the door, but ... but I could still _feel_ myself suffocating. I just needed out. I just needed to get the hell out of there and breathe and-

The door crept open. I had my fingers on it. Careful - against the metal creaking. My eyes blinked back and forth between it and my pad in the other hand. Even though the cameras showed Ev still out cold and her dad sitting engrossed with the pilot's console, I felt paranoid. And I kept on feeling that way long after my feet touched the deck outside that locker.

I stretched for a long time. The idea of stuffing myself back inside that thing was miserably depressing. For a few minutes, I started fantasizing about how I'd just barge out there and not get thrown out the airlock by old Weir-do. For a few minutes, I actually plotted it out. But we were far away from Riftwatch now and after all I'd seen, read, and heard ...

Well. I wasn't sure _what_ Dr. Weir was capable of anymore.

I'd waited there for maybe an hour before he came in with Ev in his arms. She'd been out cold, and barely looked alive. That really old guy from down in the archives had been there too. He hadn't looked that great either. I couldn't hear anything through the camera feeds - not that I would have risked it - but those two only talked for a few minutes. Then we finally took off.

I had been too excited and uncomfortable to sleep but I did it anyways. Off and on in spurts. It wasn't like I could do much, folded up in that compartment like I was. Each time I woke up in a fit more stiff and tired than when I passed out. My arms and legs barely worked by the time I worked up the desperation to take a step outside and stretch. Weir-do had barely moved a centimeter from his seat the whole while and Ev was asleep.

At least, she had been. Some movement on the cameras caught my eye in a flash, and I saw her struggling to get up. She must have been really messed up when they brought her in, because it took her forever to make it back to the toilet. Plenty of time for me to conveniently stuff myself back inside my locker.

Ev hung out there for a while, dry heaving over the bowl. I thought about coming out and letting her know I was there, but didn't work up the courage to before she crawled back out again. And I never got a chance again before that trip was over.

Ev got better after that and danced around the cabin, talking to her dad off and on for hours and hours between sleeping fits. She started to look better too, which was good. I just felt worse and worse. And by the time they finally stopped the shuttle for good, it was all I could do to flop out of the closet onto the deck once they were gone.

Weir-do had grabbed a bunch of stuff, gave Ev her backpack, and pushed them out the door. I had to roll around for a minute before I could even get myself together enough to race after them.

And I suddenly found myself lost in a crowd of people.

Stepping off the shuttle was probably the most surreal thing I'd ever done in my life. I hadn't thought about it. Hadn't expected it. But suddenly, somehow, I was on a different station with a different name blaring out over the intercoms and a different mass of people swarming around inside its hulls. It might as well have been a different world. Like I'd suddenly just been magically transported there instead.

Oh, I knew old Weir-do must have brought us there. That the whole adventure was my first time off the station ever had been in the back of my head the whole way. And now it abruptly came rushing to the front, and all I could do was stare, dumbfounded and wide-eyed, as I gazed around.

People were everywhere. Tall, short, old, young, poor, dark, light, dressed and ... partly dressed. Whatever. I'd never seen so many different kinds crowded around one place before. Sure, Bertram got a few interesting travelers from the inner system coming round to see him every once in a while, and one or two from the outer - but this was different. So different. I laughed out loud as I took it all in.

I might have stood there gawking for another hour, I think, if I hadn't abruptly remembered Ev and her dad.

I couldn't find them. Not for a while. A frantic dash around, pushing through those throngs and I did eventually catch sight of them taking one of the lifts that they had scattered about that level. I followed, but I hadn't seen which level they went to so I just followed the flow. I guess I got lucky, because I managed to catch Ev while her dad was hunched over a terminal on the far side of that deck after only a few tries, and there were dozens of different levels. But I think I got unlucky too. Because Ev saw me.

I ducked out of sight as soon as she did. It wasn't hard to hide in all that noise and movement. The voices of everyone else murmuring was like a dull roar in my ears with the belated, unintelligible crackling of station alerts over their intercoms somewhere above and around. Neon lights and signs flashed overhead in the muted ambient lighting. The only thing keeping me from blending in were my clothes. For the first time in my life, I found a place that made me feel almost too clean.

I waited there, tasting the faintly acrid air on my tongue, while those two did whatever they were doing. Eventually, they moved on and Ev's dad herded her toward a line that barely moved for hours. I waited then too - bored, and listless. I took in as much more of the sights as I could, but I really just wanted to move around and see for myself. Too bad I had to stay there and keep an eye on them. At least until I realized just what that line was for.

They were getting on a transport ship! My head reeled as soon as I realized they weren't headed back to the shuttle. What the hell was _I_ going to do? Huh? I couldn't get on a transport ship!

Wait. Could I?

Maybe. I thought about it. Then I thought about that shuttle sitting alone back down in one of the docking bays where we'd left it. Was Weir-do just going to leave it there? I guess so.

So ...

... I guess he really didn't care what happened to it, then.


	31. 203 An Empty Grave

"PROXIMITY ALERT."

"What ..."

I blinked up from half-dozing against the pilot's console only to see that blinking back loudly. Oh, and a huge chunk of metal flying right at me.

"... the -"

I hadn't been strapped into the seat. Everything upended in a sudden, violent outcry of grinding steel and flashing red lights. It flung me back up and over the chair into the deck. I crashed into a shoulder, and flopped over onto my stomach. And the rest of the shuttle came raining down on top.

Vertigo. I lay there on the floor for a moment as the whole shuttle spun, alarms blaring and trying to snatch me up towards the wall. It rained random garbage, and a low whirring started to crescendo. Sparks popped, crackled, and danced across panels. It was a wonder nothing caught on fire. And, all the while, a sharp, brain-numbing pain was screaming and swallowing me in white noise from that one shoulder.

Eventually, I realized my mouth was open. I squeezed it shut, clenching my teeth instead. Found my good hand, and pushed up from the deck with it. The shuttle knocked me back over. And then I half-crawled, half-slid along the metal floor toward the pilot's chair with that bad arm cradled close into my stomach.

A hand crept up the console and managed to sputter the engines with a few clumsy slaps. It took another minute for the thing to stop spinning. Longer still for the dizziness to pass. I waited.

The shuttle was drifting fast when I climbed back into the chair, hunching over my numb arm. A couple sporadic bursts from the engines slowed it down. They were malfunctioning, though. The readout told my that much at least. The autopilot had taken me as close to a dead stop as it could before that thing hit. Barely moving, though, that thing had smacked me pretty good.

If I had thought to spend any more time worrying about that, though, I was wrong. When I glanced up towards the forward view again, I stopped dead in my tracks.

Figuratively, anyways.

A ship loomed out there. A huge cruiser that blotted out the stars all around. I was close - a few hundred meters at most. That hull felt like it was flat against the forward port. If I hadn't stopped when I did ...

Bertram would call it 'dumb luck'. The 'dumb' being me, and the 'luck' being bad - his, that is. For me not finally doing something stupid enough to get out of his non-existent hair for good.

The other ship was barely moving. Its hull was dark from what I could see, and the whole thing looked dead in space. I tried to peek around but it was almost impossible to tell if it was the same ship. Not that I wasn't absolutely sure, though. There wasn't much chance it could be anything else out there just then.

Ev and her dad were on that ship. At least, they had been. I had lost sight of them over the past ten hours or so as the transport cruiser eventually outpaced my little borrowed shuttle. I might have started to panic a bit over getting lost out there, too. Now, I wasn't sure just _what_ to think anymore.

But I started with the engines. They were glitching up on me, and it was hard to tell just what was wrong since the only thing the readout would say was "CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE."

A few minutes tinkering with it and my left hand got some control back in one of them. I eased that one in small bursts to turn the shuttle around. It was while I was slowly spinning it back toward open space, though, that I noticed the other ship out there.

Another cruiser. Sleek, and very much alive compared to the dead, bloated transport. Cannons and turrets dotted the black hull all over, almost invisible but for the dark splotch of absent stars behind. It hung there more than a hundred kilometers away.

I froze. The engines died with me, but the shuttle didn't. A few desperate, one-fisted pounding on the console again fixed that. I got a blip of current through and the other engine fired for a second. The shuttle stopped moving with a slow whine.

I wasn't stupid. It might have been the first time I had ever left Riftwatch station - home - but I had seen enough vids and read enough of Ev's books from Nolan to know a thing or two about what went on elsewhere in the system. And it didn't take me long to figure out that other cruiser was a gunship.

Debris floated free through space around the transport. The other ship hovered where it was, keeping pace with the dead cruiser. Had it seen me? The one good palm was hot and clammy against the console as I stared out at the thing. It was eerily quiet. Or maybe 'still' was a better word. It's not like there was a lot to hear out there in between ports. But if it could do that kind of damage to a ship as big as the transport cruiser, I had no doubts about what it could do to my little rickety shuttle.

I'm not sure just how long I sat like that, waiting for one of those guns to flash before my whole world was vaporized in an instant. The moment didn't come. At least, not before something else started moving out of the corner of my eye.

A big slab of metal debris was wedged into the side of the transport cruiser. It rattled free, breaking off into space. Then it suddenly hummed to life and started spinning around. It took me a few, stunned seconds, but I realized it was another shuttle like mine.

The place where that other shuttle had broken free decompressed into space, vomiting out bits and pieces after it. I watched as it darted away, speeding towards that attack cruiser still hovering out of the way. And that was when I also noticed some of those bits flying after it were corpses.

Some of them were still moving. I stared, eyes wide and still fixed. Not the human-looking ones, though. No. Those moving corpses looked like ...

Well. I had no idea just _what _they were supposed to look like.

They thrashed and lashed out as they hurtled out into open space after the shuttle. One actually caught onto it, but the engines blasted it clear as the ship took off toward the cruiser. Then they were just floating free, twitching violently in vacuum. I just watched.

And, for the longest time, that was all I did. Hours, it seemed like. Long enough for that other shuttle to disappear inside the belly of the attack cruiser and both of them to speed away somewhere else. Even after that, I could only watch those things floating in the black outside the dead ship. I forgot about that gunboat streaking the horizon.

At some point, the transport cruiser came to life again. Long enough to disengorge itself again. This time, though, a small pod shot free from the inside out into open space. It didn't take any chunks with it, and no more of those creatures were dragged out into nothingness. It just slowed down, whipped around, and sped off ahead of the cruiser.

It flew right past my shuttle from behind. I twisted around, watching it go.

I sat there for a long time after that, still doing nothing. I wasn't stupid, but it took a long time for the idea to get through my head with everything else I had just seen. Ev had been on that ship. Her dad too. For a moment, I thought about getting on board and finding them. Another look at those things floating out in space still moving, though, and ...

Dr. Weir would have gotten them out of there. No matter what happened, he would have. I had known him almost as long as Ev. He always knew what to do. He always had the right answer.

I kicked the sputtering engines into gear and started limping my way after that escape pod. I didn't think about going onboard that ship to find them. The thought started in my head and got squashed beneath those twitching ... _things_ out in the vacuum. No way in hell.

They _had _gotten off.


	32. 204 Crash Landing

When I woke up, I was on the floor again.

I choked up some air in my lungs. Smoke. The cabin was thick with it. My chest rattled as I glanced around quickly at the burst panels and dead readouts everywhere. My whole body ached, not just the one shoulder. I winced.

It took me some time to remember where I was. Longer still, to remember what had happened. While I waited, I started undoing the pilot's seat straps. I had taken the whole thing with me to the floor.

That shuttle barely made it through the atmosphere. Me too, though I had made sure to strap myself in tight this time. Too bad the thing shook itself to pieces anyways.

The autopilot took care of most of the mess, but it was gone by the time we touched down. Crashed - more like it. The computer blew up in my face on the last few hundred meters down to the ground, and I felt some sticky blood on my cheek. It stung.

So much for keeping Nolan's shuttle in one piece.

I tumbled out of the chair with an unceremonious flop to the floor. From there, I got an even better view of the undersides of those busted consoles and scrap scattered on the ground. I tried to push myself up with my one good arm, wincing and wondering if I could still call it that. By the time I did get myself up and sitting - leaning - against the downed pilot's chair, I was out of breath and sweating.

It was warm in there. Warmer than I had realized, though the smoke and burnt out panels might have had something to do with it. The air was different too, aside from the burnt-electronics smell. It stuck in my lungs like it was too full to get down. I had a hard time breathing it all. And that was when I saw the back of the shuttle.

Eyes still a bit glassy, I stared at where the hull had been punched right through. Not a big hole, but the dent around it was. Not that the shuttle was getting back up anytime soon - or ever. I seemed to remember spinning end over end and hitting a lot on the way down and along the ground. But that wasn't too important then.

I was planetside.

I wheezed out a laugh, just staring. It was a thousand times greater than even that other station. For a long while, it was just that open hole seeping in fresh, unfiltered air from outside. For a long while, my whole world. Then I moved toward the rear hatch. No power, though, of course. It took me a minute to figure out where the manual release was and even that wasn't working too well. Ducking down low, I skidded out into a warm wash of dazzling light.

I upended again. This time, though, it was back into the rear hatch and tumbling to the ground, hand clutched to my face. That light overwhelmed and blinded me, and I stumbled around in a white-black void behind the shadows of my fingers and aching eyelids for a couple seconds, flopping around on dirt. Dirt! A loud, rustling noise had erupted everywhere all around me, but I couldn't see. After bumping the shuttle a few more times and gasping out in a panic, I tripped myself up completely and landed on my side, sucking in shallow breaths.

That rustling never stopped. The whole world was moving around me, unraveling and shifting like an angry maelstrom and I felt the air gust with a force strong enough to knock me over again when I tried to scramble back up. Again, I ended up panting frantically on the ground, eyes squeezed shut against the blinding light.

I had read about things like that. At least, I thought it was the same. That howling sound brought the idea of a terrible, planetside storm to mind, but I felt no water. There was supposed to be rain, I think. And light? It felt more like someone had thrown me into the sun.

It was hot. But not like that. It felt a bit anticlimactic, but I lay there for long enough to realize that nothing else was moving around me. At least not _right_ around me. I couldn't speak for what I couldn't feel, though, and that's all I had left for what seemed like forever. I tried opening my eyes to the dirt a few times. Eventually, they took.

Grass, and dirt. The first thing I noticed was just how much of it. Even with the fading fuzziness and black spots in my eyes, I could see it stretch on forever. It moved lightly too, swaying in that gust that had me pinned down. Pushing in all over and across my body, it swept away some of that heat bearing down.

The light wasn't everywhere. I picked up on that pretty quickly once I got my eyes blinking into focus on the ground ahead again. I could feel it beating down into my back like that heat, and washing everything else around me. I started to get a good look at it all, though, squinting up from the ground and following that vast expanse of earth and brush toward rigid stalks of bark and timber. Trees. Not like the ones in Riftwatch's gardens. Taller. Wild, and free. Crawling with bugs and rampant growth.

The sun.

I covered my eyes with a hand, and tentatively whisked back around. It kept the light dulled down to only near-blinding levels. And gave me the chance to get a better look around and up. More trees. More grass and dirt. More nothing metal or human or electronic in anyway outside the wreck of my shuttle.

I worked my way up those trees. They stretched on forever, spearing an overcast of pale blue. No stars. I almost panicked for another minute, but I remembered that that was normal. At least, planetside it was. _Real_ atmosphere. I looked at fluffy, white ribbons scouring its length and fragmented memories of Ev's books told me clouds. Not like the flourescent nebulae of the Rift. These were different - much more new and real and beautiful. Even the smoke trailing up from my busted shuttle was beautiful once the blinding light let up a bit. And my eyes were adjusting. But that was when I noticed its twin wisping some ways away.

"Ev ..."

That world wasn't coming apart around me. At least, I didn't think so. That thundering, howling rustle was thousands upon thousands of leaves tinkling in that torrential gust beating at my skin and clothes. I got up, and it tried to shove air down my throat in huge gulps. I could stand without falling over, though, if I remembered to try. I did, because I remembered why I was even there in the first place.

I charged off into the trees toward that smoke.


	33. 205 Lost in the Woods

Those trees swallowed me up fast as soon as I plunged into them away from the shuttle. They cut that gusting air trying to beat me back in half, but I could still feel it clawing at my skin and thrashing at sticks and weeds as I ran.

I think it was a forest I landed in - what with all those oversized trees everywhere - and I lost sight of the smoke trail inside it. My feet carried me as straight as they could, though I kept tripping over them. Dried leaves crunched underfoot and soft earth yielded, making me bounce along broken branches and creeping roots. I got a faceful of dirt a few times before I could chuck myself back up and forward. And I was twice as beat up by the time I found the trail again.

Canopies peeled back in the wind, and I caught another whiff of smoke. I squinted up above the trees, choking out heavy breaths, and could just make it out with the sun still beating down brighter than life. I kicked myself and started up hobbling along again that way.

The brush got thicker, and I had to scale a boulder or two just to reach a fallen, rotting log to roll myself haphazardly over. I was sweating, breathless, and stumbling when I saw a splintered stake of wood on fire sticking out of the ground. I leaned against a tree beside me and just stared at it for a second while I sucked in air through my teeth.

A big, steaming hunk of metal lay still just beyond.

I was shakier on my feet when I finally managed to push off again. This time, it wasn't the ground tripping me up. Eyes kept darting around that crashed pod, desperate for any sign of anyone. I half-stumbled, half-trudged-jogged over that way. But no one else was there.

Small fires and huge chunks of ash in upturned dirt littered the clearing where the pod had landed. At least, _now _it was a clearing. Trees lay felled, burnt, and exploded into timbers all around. A few had even collapsed on top of the thing itself, and I had to climb underneath to get to it.

Holding onto the trunk of one of those downed trees, I was able to swing myself down behind the pod. The rear hatch port was small, and cracked. No help there. I didn't bother trying to look inside.

"Okay," I took a deep breath. "There's gotta be a release somewhere on this thing ..."

I scrounged around on the ground for a minute or so. Sweating, filthy, and wilting in the heat. Dirt rained down from the broken trees above and I tried unsuccessfully to ignore it. But it wasn't until I tried to grab a hold of metal that I realized it wasn't the sun making me sweat this time. It was the pod.

I snatched that hand back before it melted my skin off. And stared dumbly at the bark on those trees atop the thing that had caught fire.

"Well. That was _almost _stupid."

I could hear some biting thing Bertram would say in the back of my head and I managed a laugh.

Ugh. Whatever.

I couldn't figure it out to open it. But it wasn't like I had anything better to do anyways. So I climbed back out away from those flames, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And eventually, it cooled down.

A lifetime later and I could get close enough to find the dumb release. Close enough to realize it was actually already open. Just a little bit.

... But I tried not to think about that too much.

So I just popped it all the way, and the pod flipped back its rear hatch, squealing loudly at me and the rest of the trees. It quit halfway through. I had to yank it the rest of the way to look inside.

It was empty.

And I stared down inside, uncomprehending. I couldn't wipe the relief and excitement off my face from a second ago. It just did its work of slowly dying over the next few.

"Ev?" I asked to the empty space beneath. For some reason, it didn't feel like answering me back.

"... Doctor Weir ... ?"

That didn't seem to work either.

They had been in that pod. They _had_ been. I was sure of it. They had survived and gotten off that ship in one piece.

Maybe I didn't see it at first. Or I just didn't want to. I blinked my eyes, pulling back. The sun poured in without me blocking its way. And suddenly those dark smudges all over the place weren't just shadows' play on the inside.

It was blood.


	34. 206 Signs of Life

I reeled.

Everything started to recede from outside me, like the blood was seeping its way back in close to the heart. First slow. Then faster and faster. I drowned in a whitewash of white noise and, the next thing I knew, I was on the ground in the dirt.

Things started to slowly push back out from where they were trapped inside my skull. Feeling crept into my hands and feet, fingers and toes. And with it, the horrible thought that -

No.

They couldn't be -

No. I couldn't even think it. I shook my head so hard it almost came off. I started to wish it would.

No.

They had gotten out of there. I had already been too late. I must have been. They were free and out and already making their way through the forest back to somewhere safe.

I clawed my way back up to my feet.

I scrounged around the pod, desperate for any tracks. A footprint in the ash and mud, some trampled brush - anything! I made five runs around the steaming pod and cinders of fallen trees and ... nothing.

Giving up might have started to seem pretty good right about then. Maybe to someone else. Anyone else. Except I had no idea what else I could possibly do if I didn't find them. I was lost. And alone. I didn't even know what stupid planet I was on.

What if they weren't even in that escape pod? What if I followed it for nothing? And now I was stuck! What the hell would I do if-

I did find something, though. Eventually.

I was grasping at straws and fading hopes when I reached the edge of the clearing, arms wrapped tight around me to ward of the inevitable realization and hopelessness. I could feel it coming just around the bend, but I wasn't ready for it yet. I wasn't stupid, but ... I wasn't ready for it yet either.

But that's when I found a footprint in the dirt.

Or maybe not.

I stopped, and bent low. It looked like ... _something_, anyways.

Something heavy had printed in the dirt there. I didn't know much about those things, but someone always did in terrestrial vids. There were no other tracks around it. They just started up there, a half-dozen meters away from the pod, and tore away into the woods. Nothing like shoeprints anyways.

I looked up that way, gradually. And it made the hairs on the back of my neck perk up. For a while, all I could do was stare into those shadows hidden away from the blinding sun beneath the trees. And breathe.

It got real quiet. All I could hear was myself and that emptiness between me in the whitewashed clearing and the darkness that managed to find somewhere to hide beneath all the light. Then something else abruptly broke the silence from behind.

The horizon broke. There, all the way across the sky, thunder cracked loudly up in the clouds above. No rain, though, or lightning, like I'd read. Just a heavy orange-yellow glow as they billowed out like boiling over steam, getting bigger and bigger. It blocked out the sun and kept coming.

It took a minute, with me squinting up at that fiery cloud-thrust out from the skyline forgetting to close my mouth. Somehow, I didn't think that was normal. Not with the way those clouds were boiling and rolling over like that. What did I know, though? And before I could wonder what the hell was even going on now, they suddenly belched up a flaming ball of molten metal with another thunderous clap that knocked me flat to the ground from three klicks up.

I got a good view of that thing howling out of that hole in the sky then, as it flashed down toward the ground. Flames whipped off it and scorched the tops of trees above me, filling the air all around with a shrill screaming whine that drowned out everything else. It roared just overhead, and I sucked in 'til my lungs were bursting, wide-eyed before it passed. It shrieked off for a bit. Then it came back around.

I stared without moving as it circled back around in mid-air, spent itself, sputtered overhead again, and plunged into the forest behind me. I felt the ground rattle underneath.

When it was all over, I just lay there for a few seconds, swallowing hard. I had gotten a good look at that whipping ball thrusting through low orbit, though. Not a shuttle or ground-air ship breaking atmosphere, and meteors didn't move like that.

It was another life pod.


	35. 207 Bleeding Out

I was alone.

Utterly ... alone.

I remembered thinking that. As I pulled Ev away from the blood-drenched body that used to be her dad. The second life pod was as lifeless and painted red as the first. Except this one had one dead old man and his as-good-as-dead daughter in it. I had popped it open too, and screamed at the sight.

"EV!"

That pink-haired girl shrieked like the desperate and deranged while she hauled that lifeless body over and out. She turned into clumsy, shaking hands and nervous fits, clawing at the blood-soaked edges of her best and only friend. Eventually, she got the other woman out. Eventually, she hauled that listless corpse over and collapsed down underneath it.

"_NO_! EV!"

She was in hysterics and kept up with that shriek. I kind of wished she would just shut up since the sound was hurting my ears.

Both hands caught the other woman's arms.

Weir's dead, was the loud, frantic, and utterly deadpan thought in both our heads.

The girl started kicking back wildly to drag all of us away from that grave.

Weir's dead.

And only made it a couple, broken steps before she tripped over again.

Weir's DEAD!

"EV!"

She clawed her way up at the other woman, pounding at her pale, lifeless face. She slapped bare skin, screamed in her ears, and beat her about the chest and shoulders with a violent, desperate fury. It was a one-sided fight.

But, eventually, she won.

_I _won.

Ev spat up blood in my face, choking and gasping back to life. Her face got no color, but her black eyes flashed open. And she was breathing.

Too bad things didn't get much better after that.

I guess I got the other woman back into the world of the living. But she was dead-set against staying there. There was a hole in her - somewhere. I could see the angry gash on her arm and blood soaked her stomach that wasn't all her dad's. She lay there, staring, like a breathing corpse. She wouldn't move no matter what I did. So I had to drag her all the way back to the shuttle's smoking wreck.

It was like watching someone else again. The other woman was nearly gone by the time we got to the wreck, eyes half-lidded and twitching while drops of blood trailed all the way back to her pod. I barely made it myself, collapsing against the burnt hull. I couldn't feel my arms anymore, but Ev started dying on me again. In another blind panic, I almost didn't see the emergency med kit while I tore apart the cabin with what little I had left. And then, I hardly knew what to do with the gaping wound belching up blood at me from inside Ev's side.

"Uh ...!"

I fumbled with some instructions inside the thing while the other woman bled out, fingers smearing more blood all over. Thank god it had pictures.

I pulled out a bottle and a gun, frowned at the gun, and then practically threw the bottle out of my shaking hand trying to rinse that ripped up hole. Clear liquid spilled all over the dying woman's bared stomach. And she abruptly woke up to scream out into my face.

I panicked again. Antiseptic went everywhere. Some even got on that wound. And Ev collapsed down again - out.

There was a nother bottle. That one sprayed out a sickly yellow across Ev's skin. Blood kept seeping out, mixing to make orange, though. The gun came next. I had to re-read the instructions three times before it got through my head what it wanted me to do. I stuck the thing flush with that gaping wound and the oversized nozzle started stapling the skin underneath back together.

I smeared away the blood after that, and laughed out loud when only a trickle seemed to get through. There was a syringe that came with it all that I fidgeted with at the end. I just barely managed to stick it in the other woman without gouging my own eye out.

It took a few more minutes of checking and waiting before Ev's breathing evened out a bit. It was still weak and quick, and so was her heartbeat, but the bleeding seemed to stop. I put a hand to that cold, sweaty forehead, and thought she looked just a little bit better than before. It was only then, after all that and everything, that I finally fell back against the side of the shuttle and breathed out myself.

Everything was numb, and too tired to even move. I don't think I ever felt so drained in all my life. Bertram would have said: "It's about time you did some work."

"Hey," I gasped out an exhausted laugh at Ev's comatose form there on the ground. I couldn't help a little dazed smile on my face.

"I just saved your life."

I laughed some more at the thought of it. Sitting there. Sprawled out and worn out beside my near-dead friend. Lost on some alien planet only god knew where so far from home. Weir was dead - stuffed in and bled out in that life pod. My shuttle was wrecked. And we were alone.

I wasn't laughing so much by the end of that thought.


	36. 208 Distress

I let Ev sleep it out on the ground for a while. Honestly, I really didn't know what else to do. I thought about it. In fits. Stalking about the burnt-out clearing around the shuttle while I stressed over other things. But I had never had to deal with anything like that before, and anything I had read or watched that included people bleeding like that usually had some doctor around to fix them up. Or they, well ... died.

Ev wasn't dying, though. I kept telling myself that as I stomped around chewing on various fingernails. I would have called for help. I _could_ have. Except there wasn't any feed coming down to our little corner of wilderness paradise. My pad couldn't pick up anything, and neither could the comm on my wrist. I tried Ev's communicator, but it had gotten fried somehow. I ended up tearing apart the shuttle anew for something - _anything -_ else that might help. Most of those old shuttles had some kind of equipment for situations like this, right? And I got lucky when I found some flares and a good, old-fashioned distress beacon.

Again, someone was smart enough to include instructions with something that I had no idea how to use yet. Really. So I sat down with the small device in front of me in the dirt and started to put it together. Pretty soon, I had a working beacon with its own little red light blinking on the side that the instructions said meant it was transmitting. Maybe someone would even find us before too long. I could hope. Other than that, all there was to do was ... well, wait.

It was several hours until nightfall - something that had consisted simply of a timed alarm and the flicking of a light switch to "off" for my entire life. The real thing was a little more unsettling than I would have thought. That general yellowish-white wash over everything under the sun quickly grew dull and dimmed to a bluish black. Space was almost always dark. But it was something entirely different planetside. Dark things always came out in the dark - go figure. At least in anything scary I had ever watched or read. And all of those things popped back into my head while I watched the sun go down over the distant horizon.

It didn't take long for me to start jumping at shadows. The difference between these ones and those on Riftwatch, though ... were that these ones came from _real_ live things moving around out there. And I had absolutely no idea what they were.

Bringing Ev inside the shuttle seemed like a good idea. Yeah. No way were we going to sleep outside with all of - _that_. I hadn't dared leave the other woman out of sight the whole time she lay there near-death. I just had to drag and slide her around and through the broken rear hatch door, hoping I wasn't making any injuries worse. It took a little while.

It was full-on night by the time I was done, but I got us both inside and found the emergency rations. And I tore into those with a fury despite how bad they tasted. I tried to get some sleep after that, but it was hard with all those creakings and groanings and clickings going on out there. Really, _really _hard.

If I had thought to be skinned and ripped apart or eaten in the middle of my first night on a planet, though, I was pretty disappointed. I made it through all right, but it was hard to tell if Ev had improved any the next morning. She didn't seem like she moved much all night. And it took a few for me to get over my own stiff and aching parts from the crash. My shoulder, especially, was killing me. Dragging a body through the woods didn't help much either.

How _had_ I managed to do that, anyways? I must have been a lot stronger than I thought.

Either way - I had to massage that shoulder for almost fifteen minutes before I could even get up. Ev still looked pale.

There were enough rations and water stored on board the shuttle for a little while, and I was pretty generous with spilling it all over Ev's face while trying to get something down her throat. The other woman choked up a lot, and I freaked out a few times, thinking that I was drowning her. She was still sweating and weak, and I could hardly leave her all alone. Even so, that couldn't stop me from seeing my first sunrise on a real live planet.

An hour had almost gone by before I realized I had just been standing there, staring into the horizon. I snapped back to, but the sight stayed with me. I was sure I had never seen anything so beautiful before in my life. And I could almost get mad at old Weir for ruining the whole thing for me by dying.

That sent me off feeling guilty and terrible. I kicked around for a while after that, not sure just what I could do and poking my head in on Ev every so often. She wasn't much good for talking, so I either had to think to myself or talk out loud to no one. Some birds flew overhead above the tops of the trees to distract me, but they took off in a hurry. Everything seemed a little quieter today than yesterday - a little less bursting with raw life. A little more _dead_ I guess, like it was trying to keep pace with Ev in the shuttle. Still deafening compared to Riftwatch, though. And there were no people here too.

You could almost say we'd crashed down into paradise. Too bad most of us were dead and I didn't have the faintest idea what the hell I was supposed to do.


	37. 209 Walking Dead

At some point, I got the idea to check on Dr. Weir and the second life pod.

I was restless, and one of the only things on that planet not moving. The pod wasn't far from where the shuttle had crashed, but still I broke out in an anxious fit thinking about something happening to Ev while I was gone. My legs still seemed to work well enough, even if my arm was tender. Eventually, I worked up the courage to kick myself into gear under the condition that I run the whole way. It ended up being more of a jog, but I got back to the pod in under ten minutes easy.

There was a hope - small, and fragile - that Ev's dad was still alive. It was harder to think of him being dead, remembering the indomitable stares, steely-eyed determination, and resolute steadfastness that he had approached everything with all the years I had known him. He was titanic, and he was scary. Most of all, he always knew just what to do, and I really didn't want to have to make those kinds of decisions right now. I wasn't built for it at all.

But when I got to the clearing again, something was different. It was quiet, and still. Not like where the shuttle lay. Or had it been like that? I couldn't remember. Everything had been so hectic and crazy last time I was there.

The pod was all the way open. I wasn't sure, but I didn't think it had been when I left. Who knows - maybe? I _had_ pulled a whole person out of that thing. Less a couple quarts of blood. Either way, I walked real slow when I got there, eyes darting about at every little thing.

When I got to the pod, I stepped up to look inside. Weir wasn't there.

My breath caught.

Did the trees just get quieter?

Yes ...

Blood was still spilled all over the insides of that life pod. My knuckles were white above it where the mess had smeared and dried from pulling Ev out. There was too much in there for the old man. I knew that. There was no way he could have been alive. I knew that too. I had seen him. I had seen him dead, and staring.

Hadn't I?

Something moved.

My eyes snapped up, but there was nothing there. Just trees idling gently in the wind, rustling a thousand more leaves. My quick, shallow breathing still managed to drown everything else out.

I glanced around. And then I noticed the other trail of blood.

Ev had bled out all the way back to shuttle - not much, but enough to leave a small trail. This other one, though ... it was much, much bigger. And it led in the other direction. Into the woods.

I followed that red-and-black mess with my eyes up to the treeline. It got dark after that, under the trees - hidden away from the daylight. I couldn't see anything further than a few dozen meters, but the trail didn't stop there.

My tongue was thick in my throat.

"D ... Doctor Weir?" I called out.

Funny. No one answered.

I tried again.

"Doctor Weir!"

A little voice in the back of my head was telling me that there was no way anyone could have left that much blood behind and still be alive. I dropped down from the pod and fell back a few, halting steps with that thought nagging at me. But my eyes were stuck on the tangle of bark and brambles up ahead. I tried to call out again. The sound caught in my throat entirely this time.

Something was moving. Something big. And something black.

The shadows under those trees shifted, and started toward the clearing. There was a moment then of blind, overwhelming panic where my entire body just froze up in place on me. The next, and neither hands nor feet nor eyes knew which way they wanted me to run. Eventually, though, I got my mouth moving at least.

"Shit."

And then I bolted.


	38. 210 Waking Dreams

Ev woke up for the first time that night.

Somehow I had fallen into a deep sleep despite everything that had happened since I crashed down on that planet. Maybe it was just worn nerves and exhaustion finally getting the better of me. I don't know. But I do know that I woke up to the sound of gunfire. Inside the cabin.

At first, I had no idea what was going on. I jerked right up out of that narrow bunk wedged into the one side of the shuttle, wide-eyed, and gasping aloud. I had seen enough vids to be disappointed, realizing I had done the stupidest thing I could. And I froze there with a scrap of a sheet clutched to my chest, just waiting for someone to put a hole right through me.

But it was just me. And Ev.

Bolts of fire flashed everywhere, lighting up the black inside of the shuttle as if it were full day on that planet.

Or - not everywhere. My eyes finally lost their terrified glaze and whipped about the cabin as I ducked under the safety of the sheet for cover. Peeking out, I saw all those flashes of light and fire flying right at Ev's bed.

I screamed.

Or - not _at_ her bed.

No. They were coming _from_ her bed.

Ev was up on one elbow. Awake. Pale and sweating, still. She had a gun in one hand and had it pointed at the rear hatch. And she was firing. Over, and over.

She must have heard me scream, but you couldn't tell. I don't know how long I just sat there staring at her - horrified, and paralyzed. My heart beat at my chest like a hammer, while I waited for the bone to crack. It felt surreal, almost like a dream.

I didn't say anything when I got my will back. I didn't warn my best friend. I just slipped down to the deck and pounced on her like a cat.

The gun stopped going off after that. I wrestled it from her, even though it took a minute because she refused to give it up despite how weak she was. And feverish too. She didn't even look at me, but kept whispering over and over, "It was there. It was right _there_." And the seconds thundered along in my ears, waiting for the inevitable shot to catch one of us instead.

Eventually, I managed to get her back down and she passed out. It took another few minutes with me sitting there on the deck, deflated and trembling all over, before I could bother to think clearly again. And then I was left with the awkward question of where the hell she had gotten a gun from.

I made it through the rest of the night without incident. Mostly because I didn't sleep. I just kept thinking about what Ev had said, what I had seen yesterday, and the blood in those pods. Nothing was behind me by the time I had made it back to the shuttle, no matter how hard I looked, and I could almost convince myself I'd imagined it. Too bad I wasn't that dumb.

It was a long time before I could open the rear hatch, even after the sun came back and beat down on it from outside. It wasn't that I was scared - not really. I just wasn't about to take any chances. Not with Ev sitting there still looking like death, right?

Right.

I kept her gun safe with me. It made me feel just a little bit better when I finally did go outside, and I really didn't want her trying to get me killed by using it again. Not that I knew how to use the thing any better than she did. I just stuck it out in front of me and hoped pulling that trigger would do most of the work.

A few tentative sweeps with the pistol from the safety of the open hatch, though, and the clearing was still as calm and quiet as it had been since I landed. Maybe even a little quieter. That familiar gust hit almost immediately, and the leaves were still rustling by the thousands. Anything else? I tried to listen for any of those birds or other animals to be sure. It seemed like the thing to do.

There might not have been any. It was hard to tell, and I really didn't know any better. But I tried really hard. And something screamed in my ear.

The gun when off. Bolts of fire shrieked back, slicing into bark and bursting apart fistfulls of dirt in the ground as I tumbled backwards and fell over flat on my ass. A few more popped off before I stopped pulling. Too bad nothing came rushing at me out of the woods.

The distress beacon lit up in a fury from where it stood alone away from the shuttle. That red light flared and blared a warning siren loud enough to sound like we should have been under attack. And maybe we were, because something large abruptly flew by overhead.

By the time I turned up to look, it was already gone. Only a glimpse of shadow. It blocked out the sun for just long enough to sweep over, above me and the trees. I twisted back around on the ground and only got an eyeful of blinding sun for it. And then I was stuck there, just blinking black spots back out of them.

I guess I had fumbled the gun in all the excitement, because it wasn't in my hand when I tried to fire it again. The howl of that huge something flying overhead started to come back and drown out the beacon as I scrambled there on the ground for it. And by the time I finally found it and my eyes cleared up again - that thing was hovering just overhead.

Scarred metal blotted out the sky above and that dimming whitewash turned to shadow instead. I stared at it with the gun in my hand for a few seconds. Then it started to descend. By the time it folded in on itself and I saw those wings for what they were, I jumped back to my feet. Instead of shooting, I just waved wildly at it.

"HEY!"

It was another shuttle. Or a ship. Small, and sleek. Like one of those birds. It dropped down into the clearing away from my shuttle, kicking up air and dirt and beating down everything in sight. The trees whipped back, rosy hair thrashed about my face, and the beacon fell over. I toppled down to my knees again, blown even worse than from the planet since landing. I had gotten used to that at least. It must have taken forever, but that ship finally settled.

The exhaust stopped gusting long enough for me to stagger back to my feet. It kept shooting off more in spurts from just about everywhere I could see, gears grinding and whirring down to a halt. I watched. I wish I could have run back into the shuttle and gotten Ev and told her. We were saved! Someone had found the beacon I set and come to get us. Real people! Not just birds and blood and trees. Funny how that made us seem so much less lost and alone just then. And I got to feel pretty good about thinking to set that beacon up in the first place too.

"You owe me again!" I shouted back at the shuttle and Ev still lying comatose inside. I couldn't help the big, silly grin on my face as I waited for that ship to open. It did, and someone came stomping out from the other side. A man.

"Hey!" I waved my arms up high at him again. This time, he couldn't have helped but see me, and I skipped a step or two forward to meet him, mouth running away excitedly on me the whole time.

"We need help! My shuttle crashed and my friend got hurt getting away from a transport ship, and her dad is dead and-"

That man had started off in a rush, making long, urgent strides right at me. A hood and scarf hid his face, but I guess he must have been as excited to see us as we were to see him. Or me at least, since Ev was down and out. Maybe Weir had gotten word out before he bought it, or they really did send out search parties after survivors like in the vids. Either way, I didn't notice his gun until it was cracking across my face. It was bigger than mine, and with a long enough stock to slap me upside the skull.

It knocked me flat to the ground, and out.


	39. 211 Space Man

I woke up with a splitting headache. I mean, a _splitting_ headache. Oh, and I couldn't move.

That took me back for a second. I reached up with a hand to touch my throbbing head, and it wouldn't budge more than a couple inches. I mumbled out a few unintelligible words at that, unsure and still groggy. But I got my eyes open soon enough, and grimaced down at where my arms were bound. I was strapped to one of the bunks inside the shuttle.

I didn't start screaming for help or anything, but I did start thrashing wildly about. It got the attention of someone else inside the shuttle. And, for the first time, I noticed that man crouched there at the rear hatch. At the sound of me trying to wrest myself free, he twisted back around with a gun pointed at my head.

My gun.

I mean - Ev's gun.

Either way, he stuck it in my face and I froze. I didn't quite like the thought of what one of those bolts of fire might do to my head. Not that I could keep it out.

It didn't seem to bother him much at all.

He stared at me. For the few moments I could manage to keep my eyes up and beyond the business end of that pistol, I stared at him too. Not a good look, since he had some kind of raggedy, old scarf wrapped around his head under the hood he had pulled down. But I could see his eyes as they pushed into me along with that gun. Dark. Brown. And cold. Dead, and cold. It was like looking at a corpse.

"What do-"

"Don't talk," he finally opened his mouth under that wrap about the same time I decided to. Coincidence, I'm sure. But he ground the edge of the barrel into my temple to drive the point home.

So, I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And-

He twisted back around suddenly, looking toward the rear hatch. It gave me a chance to wonder why we were in the shuttle and what the hell he was waiting for. Those brown eyes were darting about like they'd heard something outside, and he reach a hand up to quickly unravel the scarf enough to let an ear free. And that was when I got a half-decent look at the tattoos on that one side of his face.

"You're Eluvian!" I gasped out.

The pistol abruptly cracked me on the side of the head. My vision went sideways. Black spots flickered across my eyes, and I had a hard time swallowing. For a while, all I could see was Evelyn lying there on the opposite bunk, unconscious still and breathing shallow breaths. She'd been strapped down too.

There was a buzzing in my ears. Like a weight pressing down. I waited for it to pass with eyes open but not really seeing anything. When the rest of the world finally did come back, though, that man was gone.

I blinked around for a few minutes, a little drunk on the pain inside my head. I laughed by myself and winced. And any fantasies about pulling a daring escape were crushed when our rescuer slipped back into cabin again, almost too quiet to even notice.

"Are you alone?" he asked then, keeping that rifle of his trained on the partially opened hatch but still managing to stick the pistol to my head once more. His eyes darted between the opening and me.

I didn't say anything this time. Those rifle- and pistol-whippings were too fresh in mind. I just glared back at him over Ev's gun, and kept my mouth shut until he crouched down right next to my ear.

"Are you alone?" he repeated in a low growl. "Who's with you?"

Maybe he thought I was dumb. That gaze beat at mine like a hammer again. I waited until he got angry and opened his mouth. Then I slammed my forehead right into his.

Looking back, it wasn't really the best idea. Seemed okay at the time, though.

He nearly flipped over onto the ground. In surprise more than anything else. No, it was my world that suddenly burst into blinding pain and agony.

"DAMN IT!"

I would have grabbed at my head again. Not that it would have done any good. Instead, I was left to grind it helplessly into the hard bunk underneath, desperate just to block out the throbbing in my skull. For all my trouble I only got a third lump there.

And maybe a little something else that I hid behind my wrist where he couldn't see.

"Tell me," the man grunted down at me, returning the gun to my temple and pressing hard. He regained his composure a lot quicker, and was standing over me now.

"Now."

I winced without opening my eyes or looking at him. I could feel his own eyes on me just the same. Eventually, I just shook my head.

"Nobody's with us!"


	40. 212 Sleight of Hand

"I said nobody's with us!"

I snapped at him again. If I thought that might get him to let up on the gun pointed at my brain, though, I was wrong. He pushed it even harder, enough to make me cry out a little in surprise.

"Are you sure?"

"What do you mean am I sure?" I snapped right back. "_Yes_, I'm sure. Asshole!"

He did ease back a bit after another second, but not by much. I just grimaced at him with one eye half-open.

"I thought you Eluvians weren't supposed to be into the whole killing thing," I mumbled miserably. He stared at me for a second. Then laughed. It wasn't a pleasant sound. More like grinding rubble.

"What rock did you just crawl off of?" he asked, and it was just as unpleasant. And rhetorical, because he didn't bother to wait for an answer to that one.

"What happened to your friend here?"

He moved towards Ev still lying comatose on the other bunk. And I just about lost it.

"Get away from her!"

I lashed out as violently as I could in an instant, but the ripped sheets binding me to the bed held me back. He ignored me, picking over her bandages. I couldn't see just what he was doing with his back to me, but I saw Ev squirm a bit in her sleep, groaning aloud. Her face was slick with sweat.

"Don't you fucking touch her!" I growled at him. And I threw in a few dozen more choice words about how stupid and ugly and dirty he was. He got tired of it eventually.

"Shut up," he snapped, but I didn't stop. Not until the gun came back, pointed at my head like always. He let Ev be, though. "I didn't touch her," he tried to lie to me.

I glared at him over the pistol. That kept him on me, and away from Ev.

"One more time," he said, voice low but unconcerned. I wasn't enough of a threat to him to forget her completely. "What happened to your friend?"

"What do _you_ care?" I spat at him. But he didn't bother to let me in on a reason - just stared at me with that bludgeoning gaze. Eventually, I mumbled something angry out about her ship being attacked. It really didn't matter as long as he left her alone. And I made sure he thought she was really sick too.

"Pirates?" he demanded in surprise, ignoring that other bit. Or - as surprised as that face could look. He quirked an eyebrow at me.

"I don't know," I muttered back, not really caring about that part myself. "Maybe."

"Is that why you set the distress beacon?" he continued, though. "Are you two the only survivors?"

"How the hell should I know? The beacon was so someone would come and actually _help_ us!"

He studied me and my angry look a moment longer before turning away. It gave me a chance to look over his clothes for the first time - a long coat draped down over tough pants and thick boots. Lots of heavy-duty pockets and things belted to legs, arms, waist - you name it. Another gun, and a few more knives spread around. He looked like he was ready to go hunting, or shooting, or something. Not exactly the rescue I had been thinking of. And a _lot _of things he could use against us.

It was quiet for a bit. I guess he was thinking, because he forgot me for that little while. Long enough for me to work some magic while I waited. I nearly jumped out of my skin when he opened his mouth again. Luckily, I didn't. Not too soon.

"Where did the pirates attack you?" he started up the interrogation right where he left off, only giving me a sideways glance across his shoulder. Not enough to do him any good in catching me as I started to slip out of those bonds. "Over the planet?"

I had other ideas than answer his stupid questions, though. And they involved rushing that Eluvian man from behind - knocking him right into the rear hatch.

And that's exactly what I did.

He was bigger, and heavier than me. I screamed out as I charged him and I must have done something way too right, because he went flying upwards and his head hit the overhead panel hard enough to knock him right out. That brought his full weight down on me, though. And we collapsed in a heap just under the rear hatch.

No gunfire. No yelling or punching or kicking. Just the sudden quiet of the shuttle, and that limp body crushing down on me.

Good enough.


	41. 213 A Daring Escape

It took me a little while to push the Eluvian off and climb back out again. He was out cold alright. I snatched back my - I mean Ev's - gun. And I pistol-whipped him across the face just like you saw in the vids. You know ... just in case.

I had gotten lucky when he didn't notice me slipping the sheets he had used to bind me to the bed. He hadn't expected that. The knife I'd snatched from the side of his leg when he got down in my face had helped too. He hadn't expected that either.

"That's three times you owe me now," I gloated aloud to Ev as I hopped over the unconscious man toward her bunk again - this time, armed with a gun and a real-life combat knife. Too bad she was still half-dead and knocked out herself and all. It meant I didn't have anyone to see that diabolically clever escape of mine. It almost made the whole thing not worth it.

Oh well. I did have another idea.

A couple minutes later, and I was standing inside the Eluvian man's ship.

He'd moved it since landing last, and it took me most of that time to find it first since you could barely see it through the trees. On the inside, it was much nicer than my busted-up shuttle. A little dirty, and disorganized - but much more hardware. All the consoles seemed to be working too, so that was a start. I skipped over to what I thought was the helm and took a seat.

It took another minute or so, but I got into his on-board computer. Encrypted - of course - but nothing so fancy as the heavy-duty stuff they liked to keep the Riftwatch mainframe and archives locked down with. I took another minute for a bit of personal sight-seeing around his ship's files and functions until I got a better idea of what I was working with. Or, maybe it was a little longer than that.

"Hmm, just look at this ..."

I got hung up somewhere in the system information for a little while. I don't know how long. But I found out that the ship was military. Ex-military anyways. Eluvian make and model, and not too old. Good enough for me, I'd say.

And ... Ev. Right.

Another couple minutes after finally tearing myself away from the ship some super-heavy classified mission dossier database I couldn't crack too fast, and I was dragging the other woman's dead weight inside. I found a bunk on board to lay her down in. There was only one, though, so when I got around to hauling the Eluvian inside too I ended up just stuffing him in a gear closet that was mostly empty and taking his gun away. It wasn't like he had any good reason to complain about it.

Weird, though. I'd have thought he'd be too heavy for me, but I surprised myself for not the first time since crashing on that planet. And it did finally occur to me then that the gravity here was real. Less than they generated on Riftwatch too. I guess I was lucky I didn't get a heavier planet but, really, it was a little disappointing to realize that it hadn't all been me.

I took one last look at the man after lumping him in that closet, wondering if I shouldn't have just left him behind. It's not like he hadn't been a complete asshole since the moment he touched down. I mean - tying us up like that? And what was with the dramatic interrogation?

I had to stop myself and realize that I had just _survived_ a real-life interrogation. Now that was something to tell old Bertram about. And saving Ev's life on some alien planet? I was practically a hero already.

In the end, I just decided not to leave him. That's not what the good guys did in the vids, right? It didn't seem so, anyways. And I had him under control. So I just slammed that door shut in his face.

The controls for the ship weren't too hard to figure out once I got the hang of the systems. It maybe took me twenty minutes to get the gist. And I didn't do any more digging in the man's files, as much as I would have loved to. No. Ev needed real help. And she needed it fast.

By the time the first pounding came from that gear locker, I had already gotten the ship up off the ground.

Everything was awhirl - thrusters thrusting, vents venting, and engines ... well, working anyways. A few hasty commands and we were lifting up off the ground towards the tops of the trees. I even got the ship to crest them and its wings unfolded back out before that pounding suddenly took a turn for the worse. The gear locker door burst right open, and a rather incensed Eluvian toppled out onto the floor.

There was some red, warning light flashing on the helm. I never got a chance to figure out what _that_ was supposed to be ... because I was very abruptly face to metal plate with it as the Eluvian rushed me from behind and slapped my skull down into the console. Strangely, that didn't give me a better look. Especially when I bounced back up, clutching my forehead.

"That was the stupidest thing you could have done," was all the man said, spitting it in my ear as I winced against the fourth lump quickly swelling on my head. I was well off to starting a collection.

But he was right. I probably should have tied him up too.

Nice going.


	42. 214 Avast

"I could've shot you," I gasped at the Eluvian man through my teeth, moving my hands to where he had a fistful of hair at the back of my head. It felt like he was trying to tear all of it right out. "That would have been worse."

"Only if you missed."

He twisted me around and up out of the chair and slammed me face first again - this time, into the bulkhead. And he kept me squashed there up against the metal while he fidgeted with the controls with his free hand. Too bad he forgot about the gun I had stolen back. I slipped my hand down in my pocket while he frowned at the readout.

"Bad timing," he breathed aloud to someone else.

I swung the gun out and around my chest.

He must have seen it coming out of the corner of his eye, because he swung me around too - right into the helm again. It went right into my gut as I folded neatly over the metal. He reeled me back in the next moment and a hand snaked in for my wrist. I threw my other arm in his way, though. They got tangled up in a haphazard fight long enough for me to stumble back and get just as tangled in his legs. We both went down.

That red flashing from the console was insistent now. Not that I cared much just then. He got me in some kind of hold while I flopped around as wildly as I could, then snapped in my ear.

"Get the hell off me!"

Like I could have even had I wanted to. We got so mixed up I didn't know whose limbs were whose anymore. The gun slipped away across the deck, which started to tip. That just carried it even further from both of us. I thought about the knife, briefly, as he got his hand around my mouth. I opened up and tried to bite at him.

Warning sirens went off everywhere, lighting up the dim cabin. A split second later, and the whole thing just upended on us.

Everything shook. Somehow, I got free of the Eluvian and was rolling away until I smacked another bulkhead. The ship rattled wildly again, feeling like it was about to come apart. I might have cried out, but it was hard to tell.

Weird. These things were getting redundant.

Something had hit us. I figured out that much despite the world coming apart again around me. I had no idea what, though, but the Eluvian man must have. I saw him clamber back to his knees and punch a few quick commands into the console. The ship righted itself abruptly, wobbling, and spun around.

Two other ships came into sight then out the main viewing screen at the front of the cabin. We were a hundred meters above the trees or so, and that was the first thing I noticed - that forest stretching away to the horizon like it never ended. My mouth hung open a bit at that. Too bad it was interrupted by those two ships swooping around and getting bigger and bigger as they flew right toward us. And started firing.

Huge bolts of fire that made my pistol look like it was throwing off sparks flashed toward us. The Eluvian man got a handle on it this time, though, the ship swinging almost sideways to avoid that fire and knocking me sideways into the wall again. But it was sluggish, and still rattling dangerously. One of those bolts clipped us.

It felt and sounded like the whole underside of the ship was ground apart and ripped away. I was already on the floor, but it knocked me flat like it had just dropped out. The Eluvian kept his chair - just barely. His hands scrambled across the board again and before those ships were on us, the color bled out of view screen to tactical readouts. He loosed some return fire of his own.

One ship was hit dead-on and burst into a brilliant blaze that dove down into the trees. The other, he only glanced, but it was enough to send it scurrying away back toward the clouds a few seconds later, belching smoke.

I found the gun. Our own ship was still tilted to one side, and not in a good way. It drifted around while the man worked desperately at those controls. Nothing seemed to get any better, no matter what he did. At one point, he barked back over his shoulder at me in a rage.

"Do you have any idea what you just did?"

He didn't wait for me to answer before launching back into the helm with another frantic attack again. But I did.

"I'm starting to."

And I was. As I watched the tops of the trees steadily rising faster and faster to meet us as we dropped right out of the sky.


	43. 215 Boys with Toys

Not for the first time, I woke up on the deck of a crashed ship. I'd say it was getting to be repetitive, but ... Well. I guess I still wasn't missing all those years cooped up in Riftwatch just yet.

That Eluvian man was already up when I came back around. A few busted panels sparked in my face as I slowly lifted my head up from the floor, but those boots stalking around behind me seemed much more concerned with that then me lying half-comatose there on the deck. Funny. I thought I might have thrown enough wrenches in his plans so far to make him worry just a little.

The place was wrecked. I blinked my eyes around groggily against the deck and saw the mess from before was now ten times worse. Another ship crashed and ruined. In my own defense, though, it wasn't my fault someone shot us down this time. So I sure as hell wasn't taking the blame for that.

He noticed me coming around then. I knew that too because he abruptly stomped over, crouched down, and snatched my head up by the hair hard enough to break it right off. That woke me back up. Fast.

He snarled right in my ear.

"Where you _trying_ to destroy my ship and strand me here?"

I winced as he tugged even tighter, wondering briefly if he meant to do something more than just tie me up this time.

"I don't know," I gasped out. "Did it work?"

He slammed my head back down into the metal floor.

I lost a minute, wincing there and just catching my breath. He was still moving around the cabin when I came back. I blinked a few times, and noticed he was scrounging up a bunch of things into a bag from compartments and lockers and the floor and stuff. I watched him for a bit before noticing my gun tucked underneath one of the consoles too.

Ev was still out. Go figure. But she had tumbled out of the bunk I left her in and was on her face on the floor toward the back of the ship. The Eluvian man headed that way, snatching his rifle up from the deck before stepping over us both with barely more than a glance. He did spare the wounded, comatose woman a look while he pounded a fist into the release. It creaked and groaned, but started to open.

"Hey! ... Where do you think you're going?"

I shouted at him from the floor, clawing my way unsteadily back up to my feet. I couldn't just let him go, though. I couldn't just abandon Ev like that. He had already turned to leave.

"HEY!" I shouted again, louder this time. "I'm talking to you!"

He glanced back at me without a word. No concern either. Not until he saw the gun in my hand. Then he just stared at me for a minute, and stopped moving. But still, nothing.

"I said," I lifted the thing up and pointed it right at him for emphasis, "where do you think you're going?"

After a few seconds, he turned all the way around. Those eyes never left mine, though. Not a trace of fear that I could tell. Or maybe he was just really good at hiding it from me. Either way, the pistol wasn't so steady in my hands as I'd hoped. And he still had that rifle slung over one shoulder. I wondered if he would pull it on me.

"You didn't shoot me before," he said simply instead, though, unworried. He didn't even bother to make a move for his own gun. "You won't shoot me now."

"Ohhhhh, yes I will!" I barked a laugh as confidently as I could at him, stabbing the pistol a little more forcefully that way. "You're going to help us," I snapped. "Right now!"

It was his turn to laugh at me then, but it came off as a wretched little twist of his tattooed face. "You expect me to help you?" he uttered, low and incredulous. "After what you just did to my ship?" There was the ghost of a sardonic smile on his lips.

I just nodded. "Or I can kill you," I warned, but stumbled over the "kill" part. It sounded right for the scene in my head, anyways. I tried to make up for it by stabbing hard at him with the gun again.

That irritated and amused look left his face, and just turned irritated. It flattened out, and there was that now familiar, dangerous glint in his eyes. Nothing came of it, though.

"I don't have time for this," was all he said before just turning to leave instead.

I guess it was a big surprise when the gun in my hand suddenly went off in a bright flash.


	44. 216 Some Rescue

A bolt glanced the rear hatch, wide over one shoulder. Not that it mattered. The Eluvian's reflexes were so quick, he was bent double in a crouch like he had been that way all along. I don't know if I could have even hit him had I tried. And if I had thought it surprised him, it surprised me ten times more.

He was on me in the next second, though. I didn't even have time to get off another shot - not that I could have at that point. I was spent, and suddenly shaking at what I had almost just done. He just flew at me over Ev on the floor. By the time I flinched, he had already knocked the gun right out of the my hand and had me pressed up against a locker with his forearm crushing my neck.

The shock of nearly shooting him wore off quickly enough. Too bad it was replaced with the sudden inability to breathe.

"The next time you point a gun at me," he seethed down at me through clenched teeth, forcing me so I slid down the metal door he had already put a dent in with me, "You'd better not miss."

He piled on a bit more weight into making that as clear as he could. My feet kicked out at his, scrabbling at the deck. But really - I think it was a bit of overkill at that point.

I managed to wedge a hand or two in between my throat and his arm. Enough for me to gasp in a few breaths at least. I'm sure he had fun letting me get that little bit.

"You do think there'll ... be a next time ... though. Right?"

I spat out in a rush. He kept up the glare for a moment more, and then abruptly twisted away. I collapsed down to the broken deck in a heap, gasping in as much of that sickly sweet air as I could manage. And I had to fight back the urge to puke right there.

The Eluvian was already back at the airlock hatch and leaving.

"You can't," I gasped again, flopping over to look up at him from the floor. "You can't just - leave us here!"

He stopped at the threshold, and glanced back over his shoulder.

"Watch me."

"Wait!"

I didn't bother with the gun this time.

Maybe I could get through to him, maybe not. But it didn't take Ev's corpse-like sprawl on the deck in front of me to know I had to try. I scrambled up and over her, stumbling out in a haphazard rush as the man made his way hurriedly down and out of the ship. I followed after.

"Wait!"

I tripped up in the brush. We were somewhere else, crashed down in the trees away from my busted shuttle. And he was making for the forest.

I snatched at his arm. And he spun me around so quick I nearly threw up on his coat. As it was, I twisted down into the dirt at his feet, and he kept on moving away. So I climbed back up, and pounced at him again.

This time, at least, he kept me at arm's length. With a fist raised, at arm's length.

He glared at me there for a few seconds, fuming. His face was like a thunderhead ready to break. One hand had my arm in an iron vice, the other he had cocked back, and looked like he wanted nothing more than to crack it into my face. If I had been thinking about anything else, it would have made me sick to realize just how easily he might have killed me just then. Or Ev. Too bad I wasn't.

"You have to help me," I pleaded with him instead. "Please! Please ..." I pawed at his sleeve like it was a lifeline, and I wasn't above begging. Not for our lives. "She'll die without someone's help!"

I stabbed a finger toward the shuttle over his shoulder and he flinched like I meant to stab him, which reminded me that I still had his knife. He snatched that hand too before I could do anything else with it.

"She'll die anyways," he grunted, all but shoving me out of the way.

"No, she won't!" I caught up with him again instantly, though, shaking my head. "Not if we get her to a doctor, or a ... a surgeon, or something - quick! You just have to help me - please help me!"

"Get off me," he shook me free again, but I kept in step. "Your friend's already dead. Even if you'd had all your inoculations - exposure like that can't be fought off. It's a miracle she was still breathing at all when I found you."

"NO! Wait. Please don't leave. Please! Please!" I clawed at him some, but he kept shrugging me off.

We got to the treeline. I couldn't follow him after that. Not and leave Ev back there alone. I just stopped, and uttered one last desperate, "Please ...," before slumping behind him in the saddest defeat I could have imagined just then. But he didn't stop. He didn't even turn around to apologize for being a complete asshole. Or offer any advice, or one last parting word of encouragement, or ... or anything. He just kept walking without a single look back.

I thought maybe, just maybe, he might forget me trying to steal his ship or getting it shot down if he glanced back and saw me standing there with that desperate, forlorn, and teary-eyed look trailing after. I didn't have to fake it. But he never even bothered to look twice.

And when he was finally out of sight ... that hope went with him. I didn't even realize I had collapsed down to my knees in the dirt. But I was alone again. That one chance of someone saving us walked right out like we didn't even matter. And I couldn't help but think I had screwed it all up. For Ev. For ever.

Some rescue.


	45. 217 Triage

The walk back to the crashed Eluvian ship was a bad one. I guess I knew what was coming as soon as I saw that man walk away and leave us there to die. But I trudged along anyways, swiping at my eyes with the backs of my hands until they weren't dry enough to clear anything up anymore. The world was a blur by the time I reached Ev back at the broken ship. And I just stood there for a long time, staring at her.

I was pretty sure no one else would be coming along anytime soon. The Eluvian had shot up and run off the only other people that had bothered. Not that they had seemed too friendly, firing first and all. Maybe they had just been firing on a known criminal, or something - maybe not. It would have been easy to hate him just then, but I wasn't that stupid. He could have killed us - _would_ have killed us, if he'd wanted to. Especially after I tried to hijack his ship, even if I hadn't just tried to leave him behind instead. Why only tie us up and ask me all those questions, then simply walk away?

He didn't care about us. He hadn't even been looking for us at all.

I hauled Ev's dead weight back up onto the bunk and slumped down beside her. It was an improvement to the floor, at least. But I couldn't help thinking about how I had been the one to take her out of that lifepod. She would have died in there, sure ... I thought. But now she was just dying a little bit slower - because I had been dumb enough to pull her out. I never even stopped to _think _about bacteria, or infection, or ... _whatever_ from some alien planet. Sure they talked about that every so often in the vids, and maybe every once in a while someone visiting the station did too, but it's not like I'd ever had to worry about anything like that before. Ever.

Telling myself that didn't help anything much, though. Nothing got better. My mood got worse. Tears burned at my swollen eyes again. I looked at Ev - pale as death, and looking like she was already there.

No one else was coming. Not soon enough for her to make it anyways. Even if what the Eluvian had said wasn't true and she did hang on - we would run out of food soon. I busied myself with checking what the man might have left behind just to keep my hands from shaking - which amounted to not much at all. I guess he had been traveling light, or else really grabbed everything edible before running off, and there had been barely anything left after Nolan was done with the shuttle. The water situation wasn't much better.

I rummaged some more. Threw a few things around. Even screamed a couple times at empty space and lockers. When I got tired of that, I stalked around the ruined cabin with clenched teeth until I found the gun again. I looked at Ev for another long while. Then I tucked the thing into my pocket.

It was all coming apart around me again.

No.

_No_.

Not yet. It wasn't over ... just yet.

I stumbled back over to the bed, shaking all over. I tried to get it under control.

"Someone has to get you out of here," I breathed.

Then I repeated it, grinding down in my throat.

"_Someone_ has to get you out of here."

I latched onto both her arms.

"Even if you're," I heaved up, dragged her right up off the bed and tried to lean her against me, "just going to die anyway!"

She was an inch or two taller than me, though. And nothing but limp, flapping limbs. The lower gravity only kept me from falling completely over.

"Fine! Have it your way."

She collapsed down to the floor but I kept a hold on both her arms. I started to haul her along out of the cabin toward the hatch.

"I'll just drag your," I panted over the lip of the exit ramp, "fat _ass _all the way to wherever he's going!"

Yeah. That's what I'd do. Maybe he wouldn't stay and help us, but he must have known where he was going. I didn't. But I could follow him, couldn't I? Too bad it took me so long to think of that.

We skipped down the ramp on the balls of my feet, a few steps at a time. But she got heavy again and her shoe caught at the end. I heaved, and pulled, and I abruptly lost my grip and went over into the ground. I scrambled right back up.

"COME ON, EV!"

I screamed at her. Then I snatched her hands up again and kept dragging through the dirt and grass. But what I really wanted to do was to kick her head in so hard her teeth fell right out. Or she woke up. Whichever happened first. And then I was going to find that stupid Eluvian and stick my gun so far down his throat he ...

I got all the short way to the treeline before I tripped again. My shoulder suddenly decided to flare up and twinge like someone hacked at it with a rusty knife. I collapsed with a shriek, dropping Ev. Not that I cared much about that for a moment just then.

"No, no, _NO_!"

I whined and snarled through my teeth, rolling around on the ground and cradling that side. It hurt and throbbed so bad I thought I would die. But not me. No. No, I still had my legs. She was the one who wouldn't make it. I could still run for it on my own. _She _was the one doing nothing but laying there _dying _on me. And now there was no fucking way I could drag her all the way with my gimp arm.

I twisted back around on her in the dirt.

"_Fuck_ you, Ev!"

I glared for a few seconds. "Fuck you!" Then a few more. Then my boots were slapping dirt in a flurry right at the back of her head.

"You hear me?"

I scrambled over until I was right in her ear.

"I said - FUUUUUCK YOUUU, EV!" I shrieked.

"WAKE UP!"

Something swooped overhead before I got around to slapping her with my good hand. I was all but crying out hysterically when the trees above creaked over, thrashing with the sudden, violent gust. I looked up in surprise, to watch something else follow after that first thing. A ship. Another ship. And a third flashed by, all three vanishing past the canopy.

I froze for a minute. Just watching. Listening.

Waiting.

Then they came back.


	46. 218 Second Chances

"HEY!"

I waved my one good arm as wildly as I could. I jumped back to my feet, ran back out into the open, and leapt up into the air, waving in a frenzy as two of those three ships whipped past again. And a third time, half a minute later.

"HEY! _HEY_!" I bounced. "DOWN HERE!"

It was too much to hope that they could see me, buried there in the trees. But I jumped, and I jumped high with that low gravity. The crashed ship was still smoking too, trailing wisps up toward the clouds before they were blow away. Maybe they saw it. Maybe they saw me. They did keep circling back.

I leapt up again. I had never stopped since I realized that was a second chance I couldn't possibly let go. Ev was still laying back in the trees on the ground, dying slowly. And I danced around so that anyone bothering to look at anything down here would have to see me. The next time I jumped, though, I never came back down.

Something snatched me in mid-air from behind. It choked me right in the middle of screaming at the top of my lungs, hit me below the waist, and rolled me right back over. I flipped in the air, landing hard on my stomach a second later. My lungs crushed down to nothing and I lay there not breathing.

Someone yelled something at me. For a second, I thought it was Ev - as I slowly blinked back up, feeling the collapsed void in my throat. Then I was staring dumbly at that Eluvian, scrambling back to his feet before I could even put two thoughts back together again.

He got real close to my stricken face, and shouted.

"I said _move_!"

I blinked at him, not understanding one bit. I wondered if he had come back to finish me and Ev off for some reason. He grabbed at my hand and started to pull. It was the bad one, so my shoulder burst into a blinding pain. And I screamed.

Howling filled the air. I wasn't sure where it came from, but light suddenly filled it too. Heat blasted me like a furnace and everywhere around us exploded into fire and heat and screaming. I wasn't sure if it was me or him or what, but my ears went numb before I realized I wasn't being dragged anymore.

I rolled over onto my back, moaning aloud. At least, I thought it was out loud. I couldn't quite hear it, though. Everything was muffled. My shoulder throbbed. I found myself staring up at the sky and watching as one of those ships seemed to just drift overhead. I did manage to hear that thundering engine a second later after it roared past, even through my haze. It vanished beyond the trees once more.

There were a lot less of those trees now. I noticed that as my eyes drifted down a little and saw where they had been sliced cleanly away at an angle from above. All the rest were in flames, burning up into the sky in places. I watched for a few seconds, not quite feeling yet. Then I groaned.

"Ev ..."

I tried to pick myself back up. I was away from the clearing where the Eluvian's ship had crashed again, pulled back into the trees. I couldn't remember when that had happened, but I suddenly saw that man bent over and ducking beneath the top end of one of those slaughtered trees. He hauled something out from underneath it, hefted it over one shoulder, and rounded back towards me.

It took me a minute, but I realized it was Ev.

"Get up!" he snapped at me like the crack of a whip on my bruised brain. It was coming back. Slowly.

"... What?" I groaned at him, pulling myself gradually up.

But he just snatched a fistful of my jacket as he scrambled past and hauled me along with him across the ground without even stopping. It gave me a good chance to watch as the next barrage of fiery light splattered down across and ahead of the clearing where I had been standing last. The ground shook and vanished in huge chunks. The trees that were left melted and burst into flame. And the Eluvian man dropped his grip on me. I came to a sudden stop in the dirt.

"I'm not carrying you both the whole way," he growled down in my ear. "Get up, and follow me!"

I rolled over a little listlessly without thinking. I did manage to throw my jellied body back up on shaking legs and watch as he turned with Ev on his back and barreled away through the trees.

Those ships were gunning down the entire forest around the crash behind. I stumbled after those two, deeper into the woods. The whole while, it lit up like a beacon from gunfire behind. And one of the last sights I had of it, was that Eluvian ship bursting into a monstrous fireball up into the sky.


	47. 219 Cadence

It had been days.

Walking.

Marching.

Trudging.

It was all I could do to keep my eyes from bugging out as I stared at my feet. That forest went on forever without even the slightest hint of letting up. Or changing for that matter. I knew after days of stumbling through it. I found it much easier to just stare at the ground instead. Too bad it was doing funny things to my head.

At some point, I couldn't hear footsteps anymore. The sound of fog rolling in around the trees was all there was. So I stopped, and looked up.

That Eluvian man, Jules, was nowhere in sight. I blinked around, but there were only trees and fog and the murkiness of an unending night beneath the treetops. I sucked in a few ragged, much-too-heavy breaths, spinning around slowly in the dark. Nothing but me and those trees, though. But I just kept spinning.

On the fifth, languid pass, Ev caught me by the arm.

"Hey!"

That voice broke through the haze of the fog. It stopped me dead in my tracks.

"You okay?"

I tried to nod, but opened my mouth instead.

And, "I like your hair," was what came out.

The other woman brushed a hand back at her temples, smearing blood into those raven-locks now down past her shoulders and spilling toward the ground. They had taken up roots there like some kind of plant.

"Thanks," she said through a plastered on smile, without moving her lips.

Then the tree behind her turned around, reaching down with long, branch-like arms. It scooped her up in claws the size of her.

It was around the time that that tree pulled her apart into two, bloody pieces, that I finally decided to wake up.

My eyes opened, and I caught my breath for a few seconds, not moving.

"Uh," I groaned, not sure if I should be laughing or sick.

"That was really messed up."

I didn't really like Ev's hair much at all.

I was staring up into the dark at the bottom boughs of the trees. They creaked, and groaned. In the _wind_, the Eluvian man had reminded me. Just flowing air and gases. I was so dumb not to see it before. I had watched too many terrestial vids to make that mistake.

I bet Ev would have made that mistake. She _would_. Old Weir had barely let her watch a single vid - like he was trying to hide it from her or something.

Whatever.

I was on the ground still, and it was cold. Really cold. In fact, I wasn't sure just how it could _get_ that cold. Weather, or something like that, I guess. It wasn't like the past couple nights when I had stayed in the shuttle. I had bundled my jacket up like a pillow under my head, not thinking the temperature was allowed to drop so far so fast. But I was shivering when I sat back up.

Jules was there. This time. I glanced over, still a little groggy. He was crouched down over Ev on the ground.

"Hey!" I growled through that just-woken-up stupor at him. The tongue was still thick inside my mouth. "What the hell are you doing?"

The Eluvian's head snapped right back around on me in an instant.

"Quiet!" he hissed, stabbing a finger back at me. Then he returned to the raven-haired woman lying comatose beneath him.

I scrambled over the dirt until I was right next to him.

"What are you doing to her?" I repeated, only barely in a whisper.

"Not much good at field surgery, are you?"

I asked, but I didn't bother waiting for an answer. He had Ev laid out where he had dropped her for the night after what must have been hours of running from his crashed ship and those others firing on it. Her coat and shirt were pulled back, stained with blood, dirt, and burned in some places, of all things. She looked like shit. He had her bared to her stomach, but I could see those sutures had only barely leaked through after all that trouble.

Hey. Go team _not_-Eluvian.

Jules pulled out some kind of bulky-looking syringe from his gear, and before I could do anything about it, stabbed the thing right into Ev. I pounced on him in an instant.

Or, at least, I tried to. He brought his other arm around and knocked me back flat on my ass in the dirt.

"Don't!"

He stabbed a finger at me as I came back up, just like he were scolding some kid. I scrambled around into a crouch, ready to leap again. He kept his eyes on me, but depressed that pump on the needle.

I froze, horrified. Gaping. I just stared at Ev lying there on the ground.

My voice shook when I finally found it again.

"What did you do to her?"

The Eluvian man had gotten back up, satisfied, and stalked away so that I could barely see him in the dark. But I could still hear him. He hadn't gone far. He took a drink from some canteen he had, before opening his mouth again.

"Get some sleep," was all he said then.

"What did you do to her?" I just growled again at him.

There was a pause, as I stared with bared teeth across my best friend into the dark at him. I hadn't thought much about his coming back for us on the long march, hurrying away from his downed ship. I was still too bludgeoned by the blasts and just glad he even had. I did now, though. He had had a good reason for coming back. Not just for us. And we didn't know anything about him at all.

"Hey! I'm talking to you!"

Was he looking at me? I thought so. Even though it was hard to tell. But another whole minute crawled by, and I heard his voice again, even so.

"Something to accelerate cellular regeneration. If she's lucky, she'll wake up in a day or two," was what he said. Then, "Get some sleep. I won't carry you both."

He left it at that. I didn't. Not completely. I kept an eye on him, and fell asleep keeping an eye on Ev too. I wanted to think she was looking better as I drifted off, but ... well, it was hard to get my hopes right up after so many big letdowns.

I dreamed about creepy-calm Eluvians sticking my best friend with poison, and genetic experimentation in an underground lab hidden in those woods. It didn't translate to a good night's sleep at all. And the ground didn't help much.

We started the next day early, and much like we did right after escaping his ship - barely a tap on the head, an order to get up, and then tearing our way through the wilderness like those ships were still screaming after us.

He carried Ev. I carried ... me. We didn't talk much, though I sure was thinking pretty loudly - a lot. Mostly at his back, or the ground. Like the day before, I was heaving and puffing after the first few kilometers, and waiting for the slow death of exhaustion to swallow me up. It was the worst kind of torture, going on forever until he would suddenly come up short and we would stop. I didn't have the energy or will to talk when we finally, mercifully did. I just collapsed down to the ground where I stayed until he roused me again, got some dry rations from his pack and water. And then I lumbered after him like a groaning, walking corpse for the next eternity. I didn't know how long that living death would go on.

But, eventually, someone finally took pity on me and night fell again. The sun pulled down beyond the horizon and the sky grew darker. Only then did that horrible Eluvian man stop for good.


	48. 220 Campfire

I collapsed for the final time as soon as Jules gave the slightest hint of slowing down that night. I'm not sure if he even meant to, but there was no question about it as soon as I hit the dirt. I wasn't moving again.

Ever.

The Eluvian man eventually lowered Ev to the ground as well, though, and gave in. I won this time. Thank god for small favors.

My feet hurt. My legs hurt. My whole body hurt. So I just lay there, face-down in the dirt, breathing hard and not daring to stir a single other muscle. I didn't know where we were. I didn't even care to look. I just lay there. That was enough.

Jules kept moving around. A little stiff in his step, but worlds apart from me after all that hiking through this wilderness. If not for me, he might have kept going on through the night, I thought. If not for Ev, he might have gone on forever. Instead, he just stuck around with us mortals for a bit.

Give _me_ some suped-up super genes and I'd ... I'd show ... you-

I didn't even realize I'd fallen asleep again until I smelled something rich and smoky in the air. It got me blinking up in surprise to find Jules resting on his haunches across a bunch of burning branches from me, the whole mess tossed into the dirt and spitting out smoke. Inches from my face.

I screamed.

My whole body scrambled back wildly in a rush, kicking up dirt with my hands. It sprayed into the fire, and the flames spat back.

"Careful!" Jules abruptly snapped, as I skidded back on the seat of my pants. "You'll put it out."

I just stared at him. Wide-eyed.

"Put it out!" I all but screeched at him. "What the hell are you doing? Trying to kill me?" Every time I thought to take an eye off him he went and pulled some new freaking bullshit! And I was too tired for it anymore!

I hit the stony bluff of a steep hillside, bringing my hasty retreat to a halt. He just stabbed a finger at me over those flames between us, undaunted or caring.

"Keep your voice down," he warned with a dangerous look in his eye. "And calm down. This isn't space, and we aren't in any ship. Thanks to you."

I stared at that fire, and I stared at him. After a few seconds more of waiting to see if I'd flip out at him after all, he just poked it absently with a long stick, stirring the flames. He didn't look like he really cared if that stuff got loose and started burning us all. To be fair, though, I guess there were a lot less bulkheads out here. And a lot more air.

"What about those p-pirates?"

He arched an eyebrow at me. My voice shook, so I clamped it back shut to clear my throat. It wasn't like it was really that out of place either. I mean, really? You just didn't go around lighting fires wherever you wanted. Not on Riftwatch. People got killed doing that crap. Was I supposed to just be _okay _with it? I'd never _been _to a planet before ...

"Moved on by now," the Eluvian said. "If we're lucky. The night's too cold for your friend, though. She needs her blood flowing."

I looked around for Ev, and she was lying peacefully next to the fire on her back. Her chest rose and fell evenly, and her skin wasn't so milky anymore. She really did look a bit better, I had to say.

I shivered at the mention of that cold. It was goddamned freezing cold out here tonight. Getting worse maybe, and my coat didn't help much. It wasn't made for planet-hopping. And as terrifying as that blaze was, it was giving off a goodly amount of heat. I could feel it even from there, but not nearly enough. It lured me to scoot just a little bit closer toward the man's fire when I thought he wasn't looking.

"Why does it matter if she's just going to die from infection anyways?"

"She might not," he said simply.

"What do you mean?"

"I injected her with a stimulant," he explained. "Military-grade. For combat wounds in foreign environments. It should help."

"So ... you lied to me."

"No." He shook his head. "You would've both died back there if I hadn't come back."

"So why _did _you then?" I asked, and I couldn't help the snide turn I put into it.

It wasn't like I was complaining. Not really. But it just seemed weird to take off like he had only to come flying back out of nowhere to save the day. But, for all I knew, he was running me through that torture just for the hell of it. Maybe he really had nothing better to do than get back at me for crashing his ship.

He ignored me for a full minute, though. Until I made another noise in his direction.

"Well?"

"Does it matter?"

He gave me one of those flinty-eyed, hard-edged looks I had started getting used to whenever I opened my mouth at him out of turn. Which was every time. And whenever I was lucid on our death march - enough to pay him any attention - I just got this really strong feeling that he would have rather me or him be anywhere else. I suppose I couldn't blame him. But it did make it hard not to wonder why he was even bothering in the first place.

"I guess not," I muttered back at him. And kept on calling him a few colorful things I'd learned from Bertram under my breath. He just glanced up at me again.

"I can hear you, you know."

"So what?" I blinked up at him. "You _are_."

His lips twisted a bit into something other than a smile. Just for a moment. He kept poking at the fire.

"Tell me why you were lost out here in the first place," he demanded quietly then. Unlike me, he didn't bother to make it a question.

"Why should I?"

He cocked an eyebrow at me. "I could leave you out here just as easily as back at my ship. It doesn't make any difference to me now."

I laughed, and shook my head. "No you couldn't." He had said that before and still come back.

"You want to try me again?" was all he asked. And I clamped shut at the grim look on his stony face.

"Uh ... no."


	49. 221 Terraformed

Another awkward moment or two passed - me, just sitting there playing with my hands. I looked to Ev again, and so did Jules. Then he looked at me.

"Well?"

I shrugged. "I told you when you first landed," I grumbled back. "Right before you hit me in the face with your gun."

"No one could've understood that mess coming out of your mouth."

"Whatever. Fine. I told you," I began again, slumping over against my knees with both hands buried back in my hair, "Ev's ship got attacked ... and her Dad's dead now. They jettisoned down here, soooo I followed them."

"In that shuttle?"

I nodded my head in my hands.

"I kind of borrowed it from her Dad when he was done using it."

"I shouldn't be surprised you destroyed my ship too."

"Hey _you_ were the one flying it."

He leaned back, ignoring me for a minute or so, but staring nonetheless. Trying to read my face or something I guess. It was a little uncomfortable, and I glanced away. The wind picked up - cold. I twisted around and put my back to the cliffside again, getting as close to that fire as I dared. Jules didn't move from where he was.

"Those pirates that attacked us," he said after a little while longer sitting in silence. "They followed your beacon like I did. I had planned on being ready for them."

"So, really," I dropped flatly, "you only came after us to find _pirates_?"

"That's right."

"But - well, wha," I sputtered a bit. "Where the hell is anyone who's actually coming to _rescue _us? I mean - what the fuck are those things for anyways? It's a _distress_ beacon, right? And all we get are pirates ... and _you_." I threw a hand over his way. "Somebody has to come. Right? That's how it's supposed to work!"

"Calm down. You'd be surprised," he told me. "But I doubt anyone would lose any sleep over a blip on their sensors around here." He glanced around. "Probably come eventually, but your friend would've been dead. You too maybe. You were lucky I happened to be in the area."

"... Looking for pirates."

"That's right." he bobbed his head. "I found an old cruiser dead in the water about twenty million klicks out from here. That wouldn't've been yours, would it?"

"I don't know. Maybe. So you were just waiting to ambush them in our shuttle?"

"You've got it all figured out now, don't you?"

"But wouldn't they have just blasted it to pieces like they did yours?" I remembered them painting the sky with his ship well enough. He probably did too.

"No." He shook his head, though. The bitterness was still there, peeking behind his stone-dead eyes. "They would have strip-searched it for salvage first. Do as much to you too," he added a second after that first bit. "Probably worse. But the perennium is what's important."

I shook my head. "Why perennium?"

And he gave me a funny look. "Are you serious?" The demand came without nonsense. I shrugged my shoulders at him and he barked another of those humorless laughs that reminded me of scraping gravel back in the gardens.

"You two must've run away from somewhere really comfortable to not have the slightest idea what I'm talking about."

"Hey, we didn't run away-"

"Perennium," he began anew, clipped and condescending. "You do know what that is, right? You're not a complete fool."

"What the fuck ... Yes, I know what perennium is!"

"Well, then you know it powers almost everything anyone ever uses. Ship drives. Life support. Weapons. Planetary atmospheric control regulators," he dripped with some sarcasm. "_Very_ important."

"_Yeah_. I know ..."

"Then imagine it stopped working," he continued. "Imagine that comm on your wrist stopped working."

"It's dead down here anyways ..."

"That shuttle you crashed," he pressed on and over me irritably. "If it had lost power on entry, you would have incinerated in the atmosphere."

"Ooookay ..."

"That atmosphere - too far away from the sun to keep this little rock warm enough for you to still be breathing right now - _melted _away into space."

"Okay. Whatever. I get it," I cut in. "It's _really_ important. So what's your point?"

"My point is that the entire sector is in a shortage right now."

"So?" I shrugged. "It's not like that stuff runs out fast or anything."

"No," he agreed with a twist of his lips. He took a long draw from his canteen. "But it has been lately."

"What do you mean?"

He shook his head. "I mean it hasn't been lasting quite as long as it should. Not long at all."

"Really? That's kind of weird."

I looked over at him.

"So, uh ... why did they just blow up your ship then," I asked, careful about how sensitive he might still be to that whole business. It's not like it was really my fault, though.

"You know ... instead of salvaging it."

"They recognized it."

He said that. And I waited for something more - an explanation or something. After a few seconds of nothing, though, I gave him an eyebrow and waved a hand. He just glanced toward Ev.

"Your friend is doing better."

"Yeah. Thanks," I mumbled back.

Whatever on that, I guess. All that talk about perennium ... I probably should have eaten something, but we had nothing left for the next day unless he was holding out on me, and my stomach felt like a sinkhole. I pawed at some water instead. Eventually, I couldn't take the quiet anymore.

"So ... where are we going?"

"The nearest city," he said. "Probably just a hovel, by my guess. At least they should have a transit rail to whatever spaceport still exists on this moon. Or some way of getting there." He took his canteen and filled it from the stores in his pack from the ship. It was almost gone too.

"Moon?" I asked.

"Yeah," he admitted, glancing around to the treetops above - black now with the night, and blocking out the stars above. "The daylight doesn't seem odd to you? No, it wouldn't, would it."

"Odd?" I quirked an eyebrow at him, glancing up and trying to remember. "What's wrong with it? That's how it supposed to look, right?"

"It's completely artificial. Look," he pointed up above, and I followed him. "Stars. I think we'll be planetward tomorrow. It's a little far off, but you might be able to see it."

"See what?"

He gave me another frustrated, impatient look. "The planet. Dreggoran."

"Oh. Really?"

"Unless we already passed it."

I hadn't even noticed those first couple days. Maybe there was something in the clouds, washed away in the sky? It seemed such a shame to miss. People always said that the Rift was beautiful to come see, but I wondered what an entire planet would look like up in that sky. Probably a lot more so.

I came back down and turned my head around to look at him again, but something caught my eye instead. My mouth was still open as I froze, staring off that way. And I blinked. There was a black shape against the trees, a dozen meters away outside the firelight.

"What ..." I started, but never finished.

Jules glanced over at me, instantly following my eyes out into the woods. His hands flew towards his rifle so fast, I didn't even register it until he had the thing up and pointed that way. He twisted something on the barrel, and a beam of light flushed out the dark.

There was a glimpse. Something black, and smooth between ribbed folds. That's all I could see for a split-second before it stepped back out of the light behind the trees.

I think I screamed.


	50. 222 A Few Dancing Shadows

No. Not me.

That thing screamed. Whatever it was. As Jules swept over those trees with the light on his rifle.

I froze, that's what I did. My chest heaved as I sat there, unable to move. Between that, and the night and the fire - I broke out in a cold, wide-eyed sweat. Jules took a step forward, crouching low.

Firelight flickered along around us. The night grew quiet again but for that cacophony of sounds I had started to get used to. They felt quiet now too, waiting like we were. Nothing moved except Jules, and he barely moved anything but that light on his rifle. It swept the treeline slowly. Back ... and forth.

Silence.

There was an abrupt scuffling, as I finally remembered that firebolt in my pocket. I scrambled to pull it out and point it out into the woods too. I had no idea where or at what I should have been pointing, though, so I just kept fidgeting around where Jules wasn't. I backed up toward the cliffside wall again.

Something moved.

I snapped that way.

Nothing there.

I sucked in a breath. And it rattled back out through my teeth.

Over there.

I twisted back around.

The trees creaked in the wind. There was a loud clicking sound.

"Jules ...!"

The man glanced back over his shoulder, almost outside the light of the fire.

"Quiet!"

The air rushed. I couldn't see it until it was already there, but I felt it. And it was on top of Jules before he could even turn back around.

I'd loosed a couple wild shots at him before I could stop myself.

The night lit up. For a few seconds, at least. That light on the rifle flickered wildly all over the place. I couldn't even tell where it was anymore after those few seconds. I heard Jules grunting aloud in the dark beyond the fire, and then he was abruptly gone. Everything went dark and quiet outside that flickering ring of light.

"J-Jules?"

I was trying to wedge myself down into the corner between the ground and the cliffside without realizing, that pistol shaking wildly out in my hands ahead. Nothing moved, and nothing made a sound for a few more seconds. Just me, and my quivering chest rattling out in the dark.

"_Jules_!"

There was a rustling in the trees a ways out. Not even close, and I stared. A couple flashes of light pierced the night out there - so far away that I blinked, wondering what else could possibly be hiding in the dark with us. Funny how I hardly cared one way or another about that Eluvian man until now - when he was the only thing between us and whatever the hell those things were out there.

Someone groaned. It took me a minute, but I realized it was Ev. She stirred there beside the fire. I had almost forgotten about her, and now that made me forget about Jules. I lowered the gun and scrambled over to her side.

Those eyes were open.

"Ev?"

I reached out a hand to the other woman's shoulder, and that hand was shaking wildly in the firelight. She was awake of a sudden and staring blankly up at the night above with some kind of sickly grimace on her face. Tears were glinting in streams out the sides of her eyes down toward the dirt.

"Ev!"

I didn't think she heard me.

A few more shots went off. Closer this time. My head whipped back toward the trees, but I couldn't see anything. Things got quiet again as soon as I did. I remembered the gun, and thrust it over that way.

I waited.

And waited.

... and waited.

My ragged breaths and Ev's whispered groans were the only thing I heard for a long time. And, for a long time, nothing moved out in that black wilderness.

Then something came tearing through the brush. Right at me.

I fired. And I kept firing. I kept firing until I saw that Eluvian face.

Then I stopped.

I stared, for a second, at him bent over there with his hands protecting his head. He had collapsed to one side against the trunk of a tree. As soon as I let up, though, he glanced up at me with a feverish look in his eye. Then he collapsed down into the dirt.

"FUCK!"


	51. 223 Dead Eye

I screamed, and fired a few more times into the trees. Nothing took. That I could see, at least. When things settled down quickly after that without a sound, I looked at the Eluvian man in the dirt.

"Jules?"

I tried my quaky voice again. But he didn't bother to move on my account.

Oh god.

I'd killed him.

"... Jules!"

This time, it came out as barely more than a squeak.

He suddenly turned his head to one side, and spat out some blood into the dirt.

"Stop," he grunted, and growled, breathing hard, "calling me that."

I just stared at him, wide-eyed - suddenly wanting to laugh. But I couldn't. He started trying to pick himself up from the ground and crawl over my way. After an awkward moment, unsure of just what to do, I scrambled over to help.

"What the hell was _that_?" I all but shrieked in his face when I got a hand on him. I forgot about it as soon as I got a good look at his face and the holes in him, though. It was tricky in the flickering light, but I could see the blood running down from his forehead, soaking his eyebrow, and the stained puncture in his coat. "Are you okay?" I whispered frantically at him instead.

"I ... I don't know," he struggled with that, and I freaked out a bit more until I realized it was the answer to the first question. He pushed me away in response to the second, and hobbled over toward the fire. "Good thing you aren't any good with that," he mumbled under his breath.

Jules winced and plopped himself back down next to his pack, and I kept glancing back over toward the woods. No singe marks. I thought, frantically looking his beaten body over. Maybe I hadn't even hit him.

Small favors.

"We need to get out of here," he said aloud at me, pulling something out of his things after wrestling one-handed with it for a few seconds. It looked like one of those needles he had stuck Ev with the other night.

"What? How?" I babbled at him. "You can't even walk!"

He stabbed himself with that needle under his jacket near the hole that had been punched through it before I could do or say anything else. I gasped in surprise, but he got too busy convulsing violently. A couple seconds of that and then he settled back down, stiff as a board.

"I'll be fine," he growled at me when he was done, his voice thin and strained.

"What about Ev!"

He was leaning back against the cliffside at a rigid angle, bloody face turned up and not seeing me as those hard eyes stared away into space. "I'll get her," he said simply. "Grab one of the," he twitched abruptly, wincing again, "logs from the fire."

"You can't even get yourself!" I started to say, but he spoke right over me and it turned into: "What? I'm not touching that!" instead.

"Don't argue with me," he hissed, eyes squeezing shut. He hefted his rifle awkwardly in one hand - somehow he hadn't lost it out there - the other pressed tight to the side of his chest with that hole. I don't know if he would have shot me for almost blowing his head off this time, but I dove toward the fire without thinking just the same, and dithered with one of those flaming pieces of wood a few seconds before I got a good grip on it.

"Okay ..." I sat there with that flaming stick of wood in one hand, and my wide-eyed, terrified self in the other. "What do I do now!"

He chose that moment to come back to life, twitching out of his stupor there on the ground. Then he was pulling himself back up slowly and climbing to his feet.

"Keep up with me."

He stumbled over toward Ev, still comatose with her eyes open on the ground. That gave him a second's pause. His head whipped toward me.

"Is she a-" Then he crouched down above the other woman, awkwardly cradling his side. "Are you awake?"

"I don't know," was all I could think to say. I really didn't.

"Hey." Jules slapped the side of her face a few times. "Hey!" He cast a few wary glances back over his shoulder before sticking a finger at me. "Keep an eye out!" It took me a second to figure out what he meant.

"Uh, okay."

I twisted back around with that firebolt in hand, pointing it out at the surrounding woods while Jules stayed with Ev. The trees were painted a sickly yellow and flickering orange with the fire, but it was hard to see anything else beyond. I started thinking about how fast that thing - whatever it was - had come out of nowhere and snatched Jules - Jules! - and dragged him out into ... that. And I had a hard time not seeing flashes of the same thing suddenly happening to me inside my head.

The pistol was shaking there in my hands, the knuckles white in a death grip as I jerked it first one way and then the other. Funny. Give me a non-stop bleeding wound and I pull a miracle out of my ass. A monster? I didn't know the first thing about fighting monsters.

Some hero I made now.

Jules bent down and tried to swing Ev up over one shoulder. I only knew that because I heard him gasp out in sudden shock as he did and my eyes flickered that way. I caught him losing her and collapsing back down into the dirt.

"What the hell are you doing!"

I stomped back over, but he was already straining to get back up, face ghost-white pale beneath those tattoos.

"I can't carry her," he grunted at me. There was something in it too, something about the sound of his voice. It was weird when he said it like that. Like I'd glimpsed something he kept hidden. It locked back down soon enough, anyways.

"Get her up," he told me then. "We have to get moving before it comes back."

"Where is it?" I cast about instantly at the reminder, feeling like it was already breathing down my neck.

"I don't know. It doesn't matter. Get her up!"

"Doesn't matter! Ev?" I scrambled over toward the other woman, lying on her side next to the fire now, and dropped the torch. "Ev!"

She blinked up at me. Looked at me. Hard. Like she would bore a hole through my head with those tear-filled eyes. She didn't say anything, though.

"Get up, Ev! Come on!"

I grabbed her by the arm and tried to haul her up. She didn't want to go, because she collapsed down in my arms with her dangling feet. God damnit, she was heavy. Low gravity, and I could just barely lift her up.

"Don't do this to me, Ev!" I growled at her through my teeth. "You have to wake up!"

"Hurry ..."

Jules had pulled himself back together. He couldn't take his hand off that wound in his side, though, even if he had shot himself up with that healing crap again. It was a bad sign, I guess, because I started to feel like I was drowning in how hopeless everyone else around me was just then.

"Come on ... you gotta get up for me, Ev. _Please_," I whined in her ear. "I don't wanna get left behind. Please ..."

I felt my bad arm twinging at her weight. After two days of trudging through those woods, it was starting to feel like it should fall off. And that was what finally pushed me over the edge.

"SHIT!

"No-o-o!" That whine turned instantly to a sharp sob. "Not again ..."

I screeched out miserably, losing my grip as fire stabbed me all up along the muscle. I fell over that edge.

But Ev was right there waiting for me.

"Tess."

"Oh thank god!"

Ev was there ... and standing on her own two feet. I barked a laugh at that, and then twisted back around toward Jules. That surge of sudden hope was so strong I could have kissed him just then.

"What now?" I practically shouted at him instead.

"Keep that ... sidearm ready," he grunted and pushed past me, hobbling with an entire arm cradling his side. He canted his head.

"This way. Move."

He started off into that black wood with the light on his rifle cutting through the darkness. I snatched up the torch again and pushed Ev from behind, making sure she stumbled along between us. I didn't dare take my eyes off her, or Jules for a second. But I couldn't stop looking back either.

And I felt it right behind me the entire time as we ran.


	52. 224 A Lift

"It's been a long while since I've seen anyone walking this road."

Someone was talking. I blinked up from my half-sleep daze - more out of reflex than anything else.

My head felt overripe with blood - heavy and ready to burst. It was an effort to push it up even a little. I squeezed my eyes shut, hard, trying to convince myself that I could go back to sleep as soon as that old man sitting beside me shut up.

"... What?"

"I said - it's been some time since I've seen any folks 'round these parts," he repeated. I even caught a little of it this time. I bobbed my head, swiping a hand at my eyes when he refused to go away and just let me collapse in on myself again.

"Uh huh."

Engines hummed loudly, rattling inside the metal hull all around us. We rolled ahead to the sound along a winding road as the sun drifted into the late morning sky. And that wasn't even the sun - just photons and elaborate mirrors. The road was little better than gravel and dirt. It certainly wasn't making it any easier to nod off while sitting up. Another jagged hole in it jarred me abruptly up again as the whole vehicle bounced into the air. The old man gave me an apologetic look.

He replaced a pipe in between his teeth as I just sat there too tired to even be miserable. Wishing that it were anything like the planetside roads I always saw in the vids. Those people driving along them were never tossed around like wet sacks, even sitting in a backwards little automotive like that. Heads back with sun-proofed glasses and opened tops. Somehow, it had always seemed so much more ...

Relaxing.

"While I've got you awake," the old man mumbled on around that pipe at me, and I shook my head aside, "I've been meanin' to ask before we get back to town. What were y'all doin' out here anyhow? Not a soul around for a couple hundred kilometers out that way that I've heard of. It's just your good fortune that I was on my way back from looking in on an old friend of mine."

He kept driving, though he threw a couple inquisitive looks my way.

"What?" I groaned out again, having a hard time following him what with running all through the day and night without any sleep. His words came sluggishly back to me a few moments behind real time. And I threw my mouth open before he had to repeat himself again.

"We were ... we crashed out in the woods," I managed with a trying grunt. I could almost wish the Eluvian hadn't passed out so quickly from his wounds when that old man just happened upon us running up th road in his antique vehicle. It was still the dead of night, but we saw the lights at the head of the thing for a whole kilometer off as they chased us too. Somehow ... somehow we had found some dirt road after all that non-stop running through the wilderness.

"You and that tattooed fella with the girl back there?" He nodded his head at the mirror above and between us, where he had a good look at Jules and Ev in the back seats. "You doin' all right back there, young lady?"

Jules was unconscious, though I couldn't tell if he was still bleeding bad. I think the run had just finally taken its toll on him after fighting that ... whatever it was, out in the woods. But Ev was awake. Even if she was just staring dully out into the space outside a window back behind me. She hadn't spoken much else since coming back last night.

"She talk much?" he asked me with a cheerful wink that just made me groan with how absolutely exhausted I was. I shook my head.

"Nope. Never has before."

That thing had kept after us the whole night. I never saw it, or heard it. But I could always just kind of _feel_ it behind us. Enough to wonder how the hell it had never caught us that whole way. The only time it'd come close had been the time I nearly lost that torch Jules had me carry, and I'd been a wreck by the time we busted out of the last trees onto that road. Jules too, I guess. It was hard to be too grateful for Anders saving us with how he just wouldn't let me pass out and-


	53. 225 Civilization, Again

I guess I must have ended up falling asleep anyways without realizing it, because another bump in the road knocked me roughly back awake and we were suddenly somewhere else. I glared out the window, confused, for a few seconds.

"Woah. Those are, uh, farms, right?"

I stuck a finger toward the sprawling, groomed-looking fields out to either side of us as we drove. Then I glanced back at the old man.

"Sure are, young lady." He gave me another wink. "A few anyways."

How long had I been passed out? The old guy seemed to be driving us forever. Not that his chunky metal bucket was going too fast. Too bad we hadn't lucked into someone with one of those nice, sporty ground cars along the road. Either way, I didn't want to think of having to run all that way on foot.

"You all on your way to Dreggoran and the Door?"

That confused me for a second. Everything still kind of did, despite the few naps I'd had. I nodded, as much because I didn't care as I didn't know. Maybe that's where old Weir and Ev had been headed. None of the messages I'd read in his private inbox had said much about where they might be going. But ...

"Figured as much. Most off-worlders who aren't picking up mineral shipments don't bother stopping 'round here as they pass on by. Most of the transit routes don't. Not sure why you all were traipsing about out there, but you must've gotten a raw deal on your transport ship. Can't imagine anyone sojourning out these parts."

"What do you mean? Where are we?"

"Where we're going, little lady, is the quiet little town of Shtess. It'll just be a stop near the nickel mines on the way to the port for you. They don't get much traffic there." He smiled at me around that pipe, and flipped the red cap on his head with his free hand real quick.

"Not much in the way of transit to and from the old military port," he continued on, "but they got a pretty well-used rail line that brings trains in and out fairly regular. I'm sure they could be persuaded to haul you all along."

"A train?"

"Cargo train," he corrected. "Not much for passengers either, but it'll do in a pinch. No other way to get out toward the port and Dreggoran really, I'm afraid. Unless you got a car a your own, I 'spose."

"Can't _you_ just take us there?"

"Nope," he said, still friendly and genial enough. "'Fraid I can't. Already got my own business to attend to, though I'll leave ya with a place to stay and a good word. Shouldn't take you too long to figure the rest of it out."

"Great. Thanks."

I nodded, supposing that was already better than I could have hoped for just a few hours ago. So I tried staring out at those fields now instead. But if I kept looking too hard, everything would just sort of blur out of focus and I'd catch my head bobbing some more. I fought it off for a bit longer. I don't know why.

And the next time I woke up it was because the old man was shaking my shoulder. My eyes snapped back open, but this time I had a headache. I grabbed at my forehead with one hand, giving him a dirty look.

"We're here, little lady," was all he said. Then I looked up and around, and we were suddenly surrounded by wild structures all over.

"What?" I asked, fighting back that throbbing in my skull. "What do you mean?"

He pointed out the front port and around. "Shtess," was the explanation. I looked around too. Those structures looked a lot less real and inviting than the ones I remembered from the vids. But I guess that's what a colonial town was supposed to looked like in real life.

"Just step on up that ways," the old man said, pointing out my port now. There was a building there, squared and about two levels high. "Friend owns the bar. Just tell him Anders sent you. He's got a room in the upstairs he sometimes lets me use, and I'm sure he'll put you up there in my place for a day or two. Feed ya too, if you're polite."

"Uh, thanks!" I uttered at him with a flash of a smile it was a little hard to feel between my mood and my sudden headache. "You know ... for all of this."

He smiled back, and leaned forward into the steering wheel.

"Don't mention it. Theresa was it? Just doin' my part." He puffed out his beard and mustaches, swiping at that pipe. Then he stuck it out at me. "You take care of that friend of yours, you hear?"

I just groaned inwardly as we all got out and he drove off into that town a minute later. When had I told him _that_? I must have really been out of it, because I _hated_ when anyone called me that.

I did get another look at the town with its dust-washed buildings and white people meandering about the streets. Tired, run-down, and preoccupied with ... whatever they did on that moon, I guess. Kind of like in the vids. But there was always someone more interesting in the foreground - some hero or bad guy to make it seam less, well ... boring. But really, I was far too gone to care.

We had to carry Jules - Ev, and me. Well, help him, anyways. He all but growled at us the whole time, but he was just too weak to keep on, I guess. Ev was doing better, though.

"So ..."

I shrugged. As much as I could with Jules' arm weighing me down at least. And I glanced up to the bar standing atop the dirt and rocks ahead of us.

"I guess we ... go inside?"


	54. 226 You Don't Have to Go Home

"Oh thank god!"

I practically screamed out as I fell face-first into a bed. It was the only one in the room and my preamble to claiming it first was dragging my feet all the way across that cramped little space. The room was disgusting, but god _damn _... I was just so happy to finally stop walking and running for good.

I felt like I could lay there forever, just soaking in the warm, intoxicating feel of not having to use my legs anymore. The old man's ground car had been way too shitty to get comfortable. But this ...

"Somebody's gonna have to carry me out of here ..."

"A leetel smawl fer three," the man at the door was saying. I'd almost forgotten about him. "But awl that we kawn afford to gif out fer free. Eefen fer a guud old friend like Ahnders."

I blinked toward him from the bed, but that was all he was getting from me. I didn't even lift my head up.

"Uhhh, what?"

"We'll be fine," Jules told him, and promptly closed the door in his face.

"I can't understand a word anyone says around here," I remarked aloud, a big, satisfied smile still plastered wide across my face. Jules hobbled his way into the room and so did Ev. "It's ridiculous."

"I'm sure they feel the same way about you," was all Jules gave me before disappearing out of view behind my closed eyes. We'd needed Jules to get a word out of the guy downstairs who owned the place. He could actually make out the garbled throat-mush that came out of their mouths. The owner said we could stay in that tiny room for a day or two, but only after I'd mentioned Anders' name. Before that, he was just a flurry of fussy, unintelligible arguments. Jules hadn't looked like he trusted that too much, but I couldn't possibly care any less about anything right about then.

I might have even fallen asleep if the Eluvian hadn't come lumbering back out loudly from the toilet right when I started drifting. I hadn't ever noticed what happened to him until he came out. Or Ev. I'd been too busy feeling no weight on my feet to realize she'd sat down n the edge of the bed beside me.

Jules gave us a long, weird once-over. Some kind of decision by the looks of it, rolling around in his head. Eventually, he opened his mouth.

"You two take the bed."

That was it.

I was about to say something, but I noticed he'd managed to wash himself up a bit. At least, his tattooed face didn't look quite so grimy anymore. Cleaned his teeth too, by the smell of his breath when he pushed past me on the bed. Or lack thereof. I thought about doing so too, washing my dry tongue over their unsettling, filmy taste, but the bed still felt too good.

"So ..."

I breathed out loudly and contentedly sometime later after I'd have enough of my fill to start to get just a little bored. Jules gave me a another look, sitting there slouched like dead man in the one chair in the room.

"You need to get that blood off you," he said, tugging the beat-up old daypack he'd been carrying since the crash open. "It's drawing attention."

"What?" I glanced down at my jacket. "Oh." There were dark blotches of blackish-brown and rust red. I hadn't really stopped to think about how much of Ev I'd slapped all over myself that first day. And she looked even worse.

People had been staring at us downstairs, I guess. I hadn't really noticed that bit much while setting foot in my first terrestrial pub. Sure, Bertram had one back home, and there were a few scattered around Riftwatch, but ... Well, this was new with the stone and dirt, wooden furniture, and dusty patrons. Kind of reminded me just a little bit of home.

The guy who'd led us up to the room was the owner's friend - or son, or something - and he kept giving me and Ev the look when he took us up. He might have even been kind of cute if his face hadn't looked like someone'd bludgeoned it into shape with a meat tenderizer. But I guess it was mostly for the stains on our clothes. Pretty weird and intimidating to show up on their doorstep looking like that, I guess. And it didn't help that me and Ev were about ghost-white compared to their sandy-haired, sun-darkened skin. Even covered in blood, our clothes didn't look anywhere near as dull and drab as most of the people around here did.

"Here." Jules tossed something at me. It bounced off my stomach, and I abruptly double over into the blankets.

"Hey, what the fuck was that for!"

"To help get the blood out. Hydrogen peroxide. You'll have to soak it in cold water since it's been sitting so long first."

"We _have_ other clothes," I told him, only partially reeling back in. "I mean, we could just throw 'em away."

He was rooting around in his pack again. He stopped, though, and gave me another of those funny little half-smiles that weren't smiles at all.

"You might want to hold on to what little you have," he explained slowly, and borderline sarcastically. "It won't get any easier for a while."

I just juggled that bottle around between my hands a bit, sighing. Whatever.

"Hey ... You don't think that thing back there could have, you know ... followed us?"

"You're talking about a hundred kilometers at least," he grunted at me, finally pulling out another one of those syringes from his pack. That one looked kind of beat up compared to the other ones. "I seriously doubt it. There was much easier prey back in the woods without chasing us for days."

"Well, the old guy was driving pretty slow ..."

"Look, if you want to worry about something, worry about finding out if there's even a train here that might take us all the way to the port."

"Uh, there is. Anders said so."

"Well good. Try finding out where it is and how we can get onto it with no money."

"Money?" I twisted my face up at him. "I don't think we have that much ..."

"They probably wouldn't even take whatever you do have out here. So see what you can get out of the old man's friend downstairs. Maybe another favor to get us on our way."

"What? I can't even understand anything he says. _You_ go talk to him."

"Well learn. You aren't going to make it far out here without getting a feel for the regional dialects."

"The regional _what_?" I made another face at him. "And who said I wanted to make it far _anywhere_? Ev's dad was the one who knew where he was going. Her and I have to get back home."

"Fine," he finally relented after a few more seconds. "Do what you want. But for now - go eat. Sleep. Play with your friend. Just get _out_ of my face for a few hours. Alright? Can you do that?"

"Okay! Fine. Jeez ..."

"And be careful what you do eat and drink here," he warned. I'd already flipped back around and flopped down to the bed again. "Unless you want to spend the rest of the time here in the head, avoid anything local, home-grown, -brewed, and water."

"Just what am I supposed to drink then?"

"Imports from off-world, if they have any. Figure it out. And only the hardest alcohols you can find. Keep it to a minimum," he added after another second's thought.

I sighed. Loudly.

"So ... why am I supposed to do this whole train thing anyways?" I asked, turning my head aside to look at him. "Seems like something you'd want to do. I mean, you wouldn't even let me-"

"Look, if I could walk on my own, I sure wouldn't trust you to do it all by yourself. I want to get off this rock," he admitted with some genuine passion that surprised me. "Either do something useful for once and figure out a way to do that sooner rather than later, or I'll do it myself as soon as I can get out of this chair without tearing the wound back open. Alright?"

"Is it that bad?" I asked. He'd put up such a brave front, I hadn't really even thought much about it after that night.

He shook his head. "I didn't have much medical supplies when I touched down. I sure didn't have what I needed back in the woods. Just let me rest."

"Okay," I told him. "I ... I can do that."


	55. 227 On Tap

"Hey."

Ev all but jumped out of her skin when I finally grabbed her by the shoulder. I'd called out to her a few times while I made my way into the bar, but she hadn't noticed. There weren't so many people in there, so the room wasn't so loud yet. She should have heard me.

"Don't go all spacey on me again," I warned her. "Old Weir-do's gone, but I'm not. And you make me feel like I'm just talking to myself."

"Shut up, Tess."

Her voice was flat, and far away. No venom, but I got the feeling just the same. She didn't look at me. She _was_ spacing out.

I know, I know. It felt horrible even as I said it out loud, but I couldn't help blurting something out after watching her barely aware over the past few days. I wanted someone other than Jules for company, and everyone in that town just seemed to avoid us for the most part. Not that I tried to hard with them. I just ... I just wanted to see her _not_ all broken up inside.

So I groaned.

"You've gotta stop thinking about it."

"What am I supposed to be thinking about?"

"Hey ..."

I reached across the table and put a hand over hers.

"It's going to be okay," I told her seriously. "_We're_ going to be okay."

She looked at me for a few, long moments. Then she laughed. I actually got a laugh out of her for the first time in days. Too bad this one was bitter, short-lived, and half-hearted.

"No, Tess," she said. She swiped at an eye with the back of one of her hands, sniffing loudly. "It won't."

It was simple, and final. And I felt her slipping away.

We sat there for a while longer, me trying to cheer her up and breathe some life back in, but nothing really took, falling flat and lifeless on her end. I tried to sympathize more - I really did - but I kind of just wanted my friend back too much. Nolan Weir's death was ... shocking. But that's about it. I didn't really _feel_ anything for him. He wasn't the kind of guy most people felt anything about. Well, except his coworkers, I guess. They must have just loved, loved, loved that big old intimidating brain of his.

No. We were so far away from everyone we'd ever known and Ev was all I had left right now. It hurt - physically - to watch her shattered in an instant. But telling her how much better than her dead old dad I really thought she was wouldn't have gotten me anything more than her hating me forever.

"I keep thinking I can go back," she was saying sometime later - still morose and broken-hearted, but talking about it at least. Lamenting in a low murmur, anyways. "Like I could change it. It hurts. You know that? I know I can't, but I want it so badly it feels like I just have to close my eyes hard enough and I'll be back there again. Like this isn't really real. So bad it hurts," she finished off after a long pause. Her eyes had already scraped the table clean with how hard they'd been digging into it that whole time. Back, and forth.

"How's Jules?" I asked, as much to change the mood as not knowing what else to say about that. The owner of the bar - Maddee-ass or Mateh-us or something - was giving me the stink-eye from behind the counter at the head of the room. I'd tried to talk to him yesterday about the train, and again this morning. Both times hadn't gone over too well. I don't know why he got so pissed at me since it was him I could barely understand.

"Well?"

I came back around to Ev once she hadn't bothered answering for a while. She just blinked in my direction of a sudden.

"What? Oh. Fine," she said. Then shrugged her shoulders. "Better. I suppose."

Once she'd come around a bit more to start asking questions, I'd had to fill her in on most of what had happened those last couple of days spent out in the woods. The crash. Jules, and those pirates. I'd avoided anything about her dad or not finding his body when I went back. I didn't want her to think that thing had eaten it or something like that. Probably freak her the fuck out on top of everything else.

She hadn't been as interested in the Eluvian as I'd been, though. Weird. But she got all quiet when I mentioned that creepy thing that chased us out of the forest. I thought that she maybe knew something about it or what it was, but she wouldn't answer me when I asked about it. Just tried to change the subject, and not too subtly either. I remembered those weird things from the cruiser wreck, though. And I could put a few things together in my head when I needed to.

"Here he comes," Ev said, glancing up toward the stairs across the room.

I twisted around in time to see Jules coming down, and looking a lot better. I'd been gone all day trying to figure that stuff with the train out and the last time I'd seen him, he'd been sticking himself with the last of those needles he had. Now I could barely tell he'd ever been off his feet at all. He was cleaned up, dressed up in his long coat, and wearing that grim, stone-faced look again. Looking just like the day I first saw him ... and got a mouthful of rifle butt.

"What did you find out?" he asked quietly at my shoulder after weeding his way through the other tables and the few groups of people already in for the late afternoon. We'd been there a few days now, but it was easy to tell that it was probably the only place to drink in the whole town and it filled up pretty quick by nighttime. Most of the rest of the town was either residential or industrial - some sort of mining thing, like that old man had said, the only reason it existed at all. I could tell the crowds made him edgy, but even stuffy old can't-kill-me-because-I'm-Eluvian Jules must have gotten stir-crazy stuck up in that room the whole time. It wasn't hard to smile at him this time with everything I'd learned that day. Remembering that made me forget Ev's poor mood for a few.

"I guess you finally decided to get over that whole stomach-puncture thing, huh?" I didn't even notice a limp in his step anymore. "That stuff really does the trick." I glanced at Ev looking alive and well - physically, at least. I never mentioned that bit about him sticking her with his heal-all drug while she was out and maybe, just maybe, saving her life. She didn't need to know it was my fault for pulling her out of that pod in the first place.

"Had to use the last of what I had," he said, sounding bitter about that. His eyes flickered at me like it was my fault for some reason. I shrugged.

"You were gone a long time."

"Worried about me? Awww ..."

"What did you find out?" he repeated, barreling angrily over those overly-done, cutesy sounds, and I flashed him a dazzling smile in turn.

I could afford to be dazzling. I had good news. I'd done what he'd asked me too, and got exactly what he needed.

Jules had been trying to get me to go figure out what to do about getting out of that town since the moment we got there three days ago. Gotten pretty angry when I refused to do anything more than sleep off the whole running-for-my-life-while-being-chased-by-a-freaky-monster thing for the first night and day we got that room. Then it was all about carefully gorging on whatever Matty would give us and I could take when he wasn't paying enough attention - not that I felt too bad about stealing some of the worst food I'd ever tasted. Really, it was almost criminal how god-awful and shitty the local food was. And I think Jules was right about avoiding most of it. Too bad the hardest liquor they had tasted like someone had pulled it out of a septic pipe.

Today, though - today I took a good long look at that place where the train was supposed to be. _Just_ like Jules wanted ...

"It _would _be really hard to get out of here," I told him after baiting the information a bit longer. He didn't really take it like I could've hoped, but it was nice to know that I was the one he needed for once. And just in time too, since he looked like he could take that whole town on himself again now. Probably would have gone and done it all tomorrow too, if I hadn't already.

I had spent all day looking around the place where they loaded all that crap they mined out of the hills outside of town on. The train wasn't supposed to come very often, but I had seen it roll in while I was hanging around out of sight of the guys working there. Apparently they were ready to make a shipment into port, and apparently they'd be loading it tomorrow. And that train was locked down tight and controlled by probably the only computer now in that entire town.

"Would?" he grunted. Suspicious, and impatient. And, again, I just hit him with another smile.

"That's right. Except ..."

"Except _what_?"

"Except you have _me_."


	56. 228 But You Can't Stay Here

"You're going to _hack _into their security systems. A colonial _government_ security system." And as if that wasn't enough sarcasm, Jules tacked on an insult at the end.

_"You_."

"Don't get all snarky on me," I told him. "I got _your_ ship off the ground, didn't I?. Uhhh ... _yeah_," I stuck a finger in his face. "Your military-grade spaceship."

Jules was looking at me like he hadn't really thought that one entirely through since it happened. I could see the thoughts rolling around in his head for once, but he didn't dare say them out loud. They'd make me look too good.

Ass.

"And the stuff on that train was waaay older."

I'd spent all day trying to get as close a look as I could, and I was pretty sure that old computer system interface was over ten years old. Even on that closed connection, microwaves were bleeding out it was so badly dated. I'd seen old stuff like that stored away back home. And I was pretty sure I could trick it into opening for us if I could just get close enough to try with my pad.

"I can _absolutely _get us on that thing tomorrow."

Jules stared at me for a while longer. I glanced at Ev, but she still seemed pretty distracted. So I just waited for the Eluvian man to make up his mind.

"Fine," he said. I couldn't read his mind anymore, but I could guess. He'd started getting closed, and distant again - not that that was a big change from the past few days. But at least he'd spent more time talking than just grunting and threatening. I guess now that the port was so close he didn't have to, though. He was probably getting ready to bolt.

I guess that was fine. A little weird, though. After the past week, I had a hard time thinking about Jules just being gone all of a sudden. It made sense, but ...

Well. I guess we were all just going home then after all. Right?

"Tonight," he said, making it a statement. But I was leading this show. And there wasn't a damn thing he could do about that for once.

I shook my head.

"Tomorrow," I told him.

"Why."

It was flat, irritated, and dead-cold. But I felt generous.

"They're supposed to load up during the day and head out after dark," I explained to him, drawing it out with a wicked, conspiratorial wink. "We can sneak on then."

"And how did you find _that_ out?"

"I have my ways ..."

I flashed another dramatic smile at him. Too bad those "ways" were just plain-old asking a few people working there. I'd found one of the guys who ran the thing out from the port. His accent wasn't so bad, so I could understand him at least. He kept giving me funny looks, though. Maybe Jules was right about us sounding as weird to them too. I guess it made sense.

Jules just sighed, leaning back in his chair.

"So they won't just let us on?" he asked then. "Did you even manage to ask, or check with Matthias, about it while you were spending all that time running around out there?"

"Uh, yeah. I did." And the guy had been pretty adamant about it. Something about government property and all that. I told Jules as much, and he looked even less happy about the whole thing. I wasn't really sure what else we were going to do, though. If he was thinking about stealing a car - they must have been pretty rare out there. I hadn't seen a single one after the old man left days ago. And I didn't think that old guy was coming back either. He didn't really seem to fit in too well now that I thought about it, anyways.

Weird.

Oh well. It's not like I'd seen the rest of the people on that moon yet. For all I knew, maybe they spoke right everywhere else. Just look at that fidgety guy from the train.

"Fine," Jules said again. And slapped the table with his hand to get up.

"Tomorrow then. Be ready."

"Yep."


	57. 229 Night Cap

I shot straight up in bed. Gasping.

"What the fuck ..."

My whole body was covered in a cold sweat. Those rumpled clothes I'd slept in since Jules was in there with us were sticking to me now. Choking me. And I struggled to breathe. Terrifying, and sudden. The dark all around me squeezed tight and suffocating.

It passed.

"What the ... _fuck _..."

I gasped out again, blinking around. I couldn't remember what I'd dreamt about, but it sure as hell wasn't anything good. It kind of left me feeling like someone had been trying to drive a bolt through the back of my skull.

"Damnit ..."

It must have been all that god-awful food and beer. My stomach was in knots, and I felt sick.

I did finally get myself back under control, though. Enough to swipe around at the cheap, sweat-soaked sheets and realize something was missing.

"Ev?"

The room was still. It must have still been night out since there wasn't any light poking in through the cracks in the wall. I guess they could get away with that with so much atmosphere around. I could just barely make out Jules' chair in the corner.

"Jules!" I whispered harshly at him. "Where'd Ev go?"

I flopped over to the edge of the bed to reach out and shake his chair, and I toppled right over to the floor. It was empty and I'd been ready for a full-sized man passed out in it. He was gone too.

"What the fuck ... where is everybody?"

No one answered me, so I groaned out loud and dragged myself back up to my feet. After a minute of stumbling around, I decided that they were both really gone. I even checked the toilet. Nothing. It was just me in there.

I scrambled back around for my jacket and shoes in the dark. I don't know why I didn't think to turn the light on first, but by the time I did, someone was at the door. I blinked as the hallway light spilled in, throwing a hand in front of my eyes.

"Damn it. Jules?"

There was a man standing there. He didn't answer, though. He just pointed a gun at me. And shot.


	58. First Interlude

It was always dark here.

I would look up, but there would be no stars. It was hard to tell whether that was just the atmosphere, or something else altogether. It started to gnaw at the flesh after a while - settling in with a chill deep in the bones. It eroded courage and conviction. Reasoning became less sound the more the eyes began to fail. We started jumping at shadows, and snapping at those still living. And they were becoming precious few.

The wind was cold. It might have been night, or it might have been day - everyone left had given up on figuring that out some time ago, along with everything else. It didn't seem so important anymore. Not with the way anyone slow, dazed, or unlucky enough to do so didn't last very long anyways.

How long had it been now?

Days?

Weeks?

It was one, long endless night in the dark. The air was thick, and damp, and it felt claustrophobic out there amongst the black trees and the vanished dead even though the forest went on forever. If there really had ever been an original mission statement and this all wasn't just some, elaborate nightmare - it had said two days. Two days from the LOD outside the drop point.

It had been at least two days since we'd lost Ericks.

There was light enough, anyways - if you felt like risking it. The problem was that it always attracted something much worse than the dark. We'd found that out quickly enough in those first few hours on the move.

Light discipline.

That was what LT had called for soon after Dowager had lit up off in the bush and got himself swallowed whole before anyone else knew what'd happened. The rest of his team too, when they went flying off after him in a rush with lights. Gone without a trace. At least, the ones who'd been carrying flashlights. Only Briggs had been left - shivering and traumatized by himself in the dark. Whatever got them, they'd snatched another guy away right next to him. He was the only one without a light.

And covered in the rest of the guys' blood.

LT figured it out real quick. He had that idea anyways. A smart guy, Lieutenant Fletcher. And right about one thing, at least. We didn't lose anymore for a while after that. So it must have proved his point.

Fletcher tried to get the captain up on the horn after that while we held position with as close to three-sixty security as we could get, spread out in the black woods. No luck, though. Some kind of communications blackout, maybe. Odd that it would happen so quickly on a covert search and destroy op. But it did. And all that poor bastard holding the comm got for his trouble was to be the next one dragged off into the dark.

We were supposed to keep fire discipline too. Weapons were loaded, but any live fire would have given us away. Between third team's sudden vanishing act to a chorus of terrified screams, no communications, and a corporal carrying a transceiver snatched up right in front of us - it wasn't much of a surprise when the remaining guys cut lose. We tore up the trees with rifle fire.

A lesser outfit might have completely lost it.

We were on the move constantly after that. Eventually, men stopped caring about noise and giving away their positions as they rushed headlong through the dead wood. Second squad disintegrated into wild fireteams that got lost assaulting shadows after those things got the lieutenant. And Sergeant Winters didn't last long with first squad once the clicking started. Third squad learned to run at that sound quickly enough. It didn't take a dozen men getting slaughtered without a damn thing they could do about it to teach us that.

We'd run after that - what was left of third squad. And we'd been on the run ever since. If there was a Hell, this certainly seemed like the right place to me.

Two days.

Maybe.

But it was hard to tell there in that dark.

Liam stirred to one side of me, the sound of the other man shifting so abrupt that the breath caught in my throat. He flexed cold, rigid hands on the stock of his rifle. He slept with it on top of him. Most of us did.

"How long?" he whispered as quietly as he could, voice scratching and groggy from too little sleep. It came out as more of a parched croak.

"Twenty - twenty five minutes," I murmured back. I squinted down at my timepiece, but the numbers still ran together in the dark. I could never be sure. And I didn't dare switch on the light. It didn't matter enough. Instead, I took to counting the seconds to pass time and keep awake.

"You've got another five," I offered the other man, for whatever it was worth. Liam didn't say anything. He just lay there completely still with his eyes open like a corpse.

I wondered how much farther it was to the extraction point. Whatever the importance of that mission to whoever authorized it from on high, it had ended in failure as far as what was left of second platoon was concerned. It fell apart in the kind of ambush in an alien environment that I could only have nightmares about. If I survived. If any of us survived.

All that was left now was to get the hell out of there.

Five minutes later, and I was putting a careful hand on Dieter to wake him up when the guy nearly took my hand off with a knife. I reeled back out of reach and started to spit something angry back down at the other man when he just as abruptly froze.

"Did you hear that?"

I stopped too.

"What was it?"

"I can hear them," Dieter hissed after a second, squinting his eyes almost shut. He tapped a finger to the side of his skull.

"Inside my head!"

We got the rest of them up in cascading fashion with each man waking another until all were moving again. Half an hour of sleep every couple hours for days now. Ration bars and the abundance of water every man always carried in his rucksack. That wasn't the problem. It was the fact that we had to stop at all.

People vanished when we did.

"Rivera," was all Shawn said when I found him crouching in the dirt where the missing man had been. That brought us down to six now. From a full complement of over forty men. And I could only imagine what had become of the rest of the battalion on that failed op.

We found water later that day. A stagnant-looking river of black that cut into our path. Nothing drinkable, of course, but it was a welcome landmark in the middle of nowhere. I had gotten enough of a look at the tactical maps before drop-off to know we could follow it right to the extraction point. That good news put an urgency in almost everyone's step.

We lost Dieter an hour or so later, and decided not to sleep at all after that until we were clear. After I woke up that last time, I thought I knew just what the man had meant about them being inside his head.


	59. 301 Just a Nightmare

Tess' snoring was what woke me up.

Not the dreams. Not that stomach-wrenching lucid memory playing back inside my head while I slept, seeing the dead forest through the eyes of that dead man, Brennan, and leaving me nauseous when I woke. Not the chills that crept up my spine like tiny, crawling spiders. No.

It was Tess' snoring.

I laid there, awake in bed, for a few minutes afterward. I had never had that particular dream before. It was something new. Brennan had never thought about why he was there before, but he had started to in this one. Too bad I didn't have Elle here to grill me about it. Too bad I didn't have anyone.

Except Tess.

And whoever the hell that Eluvian man was supposed to be.

The bar we were staying in wasn't very welcoming. People left us alone if we stayed out of sight, but you couldn't keep three people locked up in a tiny room for days on end. I wanted to leave. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts.

Flashes of dad's face as he died plagued me all the way down the back stairs to the main room.

It was busy tonight. It always was, but worse so tonight. They mined nickel out there and Matthias was the only one with a bar in the planetside town. The train that Tess had talked about had come in and I figured they had gotten their first new shipment in today. From the taste of what we had had to drink the last few days, I supposed everyone there was excited for an import.

I avoided the main room like I avoided everyone since I didn't feel like dealing with it. Not that anyone had really bothered us much since being there with our funny clothes and complexions. A few had tried when Tess and I were together or alone without Julian around. They never tried to talk to us when he was there, though, and Matthias shooed off anyone else as soon as he saw. Not that we could understand them they were talking so fast with their brogue. I was only just starting to catch more words here and there the first time around. Mostly after sitting there listening for so long. It distracted me.

I ducked into a doorway and stayed there, in a quiet corner. I could hear Matthias somewhere in the back probably dealing with that delivery, and the nighttime crowd out front. I had figured out their work week from overhearing and today was the last day. It was late and they were all drunk and celebrating.

Tess enjoyed it. A bit. But it didn't really remind me of home at all.

I sat there, listened, and tried not to think about everything. Too bad I couldn't help the bits and pieces flitting through my head anyways. Sometimes it was all I felt like doing. Thinking. Sometimes it was all I _could_ do now. I wondered if it would ever stop too, but I didn't think that sort of thing was supposed to just go away. Dad. Home. They were just ghosts of memories now. They lived on inside my head in stop-start motion that always felt left too open-ended and unfinished. Drab, lifeless, and stuck in time like someone had just quit painting the image partway through.

When the gunshot came, it dashed all those thoughts to pieces again.

It was a gunshot, because I felt it reverberate. No one else did in the main room - they were too loud. I waited a second without breathing, but Matthias kept on talking to whoever he was dealing with in the back like nothing had happened at all.

Maybe it hadn't. I could believe that. Hope. For a split second.

But that was all I got.

That gunshot ran through me like soundwaves under water. Muffled. Sluggish. I realized I hadn't even really heard it. That was why no one else had. I had just ... _felt_ it.

And I knew exactly where it had come from.

"Tess."

I stumbled out of hiding, feet plodding along back toward the stairs with the world flying out from under me like I was in a dream. The gentle roar of the main room washed out with all the other sound, drowned by the louder roar of white noise as it grew inside my head. I hit the bottom of the stairs and started up. It felt slow, but I was at the top of the landing in the next instant.

The hallway was empty.

That misshapen door to our room closed shut with a bang. It didn't seem right somehow. Out of sync. The walls pulsed once, and were still. I started to feel sick to my stomach, but I'd started shutting each and every one of those thoughts off like lights inside my head as soon as that gunshot went off. By then, the rest of me was just moving ahead on its own.

I reached the door, and it was shut. Locked, even. I put my ear to it and I could hear scuffling in there. I could even see those two men in there through the door. One of them snapped his head toward the sound of my hand on the knob. The other took a cutter to the throat of Tess' body on the floor.

"Get the head. Quick."

I had taken that firebolt pistol back from Tess the other night. It was in my hand in an instant and pointed at the knob. That thing was nothing but cinders in an instant and the door was pounding back on its hinges.

She was dead.

I burst inside just as the firearc blade of that cutter sliced right through Tess's neck. It shorted out halfway through in a bright show of sparks. But the damage was done. If she wasn't dead before, she was now. The other man pointed a gun at me.

She was dead.

A needle of fire lanced across the room, barely making a sound. It would have hit me too, except I wasn't there anymore.

I lost myself in a sudden rush as my entire body flowed down to one side of the room and then back up again where the man with the gun was standing.

The man with the cutter wrenched Tess head roughly away from her body in the same instant I pounced on the other. I knocked the gun out of his hand and bashed his face around the other way on the backstroke. He swung a fist at me in turn, but I ducked around the heavy swing, came up behind him, and cracked the butt of my pistol over the back of his head. That sent him right down to the ground.

The other one pulled another gun on me. I caught his hand as he thrust it at me and pushed the needle of fire that came out into the wall. It melted away a chunk five times its size.

He swiped me with the gun after that. It took me in the side of the face and I toppled over backwards. I took his pistol with me, though, flopping over the side of the bed. He just snatched Tess' head up and bolted for the door.

I caught him at the doorway. He tried to pull it shut behind him as he dashed through, but the firebolt got him in the back before he could. A hole incinerated itself right through to his front side, splattering the opposite wall with blood and ash. He tripped over and collapsed in a sprawl against that wall while Tess' bloody head bounced back into the room.

I didn't look at that. I didn't look at her. I didn't say a word, and I didn't think a single thought. I just paced back and forth in a stormy line for what felt like hours. I could hear the commotion outside. People were yelling. I couldn't hear them, or make out the words. I just kept trudging back, and forth.

Back. And forth. While the walls pulsed a thunderous gray.

Then I stomped right up to that other man on the floor and shot him dead.


	60. 302 Two-Fold

"Evelyn."

I jerked back awake at the touch of a hand. Was I sleeping? I didn't think so.

No. I'd been sitting there on the floor with that bloody, headless corpse gathered up in my arms.

The Eluvian man was standing there. He crouched down in front of me. Julian.

Julian. That was his name.

Tess was always calling him "Jules" for some reason. He seemed to hate when she did that.

"What happened?"

He was talking to me. I couldn't help the shaking in my head as I watched the walls around me dance and bounce about like mists of colorless gray. They didn't seem real somehow. Like if I looked at them too hard they would just come apart. I didn't think they were supposed to do that.

"Evelyn."

He snapped fingers in front of my face and I blinked at him, jerking upright again. I'd been staring at that head on the floor. That head with the dyed pink curls - bloody, and matted. Those eyes were staring back at me, one of them half-lidded. I think she was dead before they even started to ... to cut.

It all happened so fast.

"Tell me what happened," he prodded again. Somber, and grave as death.

I looked at him. I _really _looked at him. Looked through him. For a moment, he felt immaterial too. I blinked at him again.

"Where were you?"

It came out as barely more than a whisper. I could hardly form my voice to speak my tongue was so thick and swollen inside my mouth. I looked through him and saw the people gathered about outside the room. Matthias lead them. Frightened, and angry.

They were immaterial too.

"Where were you?"

I grabbed him by the front of his coat, just thinking how if he had been there Tess wouldn't have been dead. He had left her alone in that room. He could have protected her. he could have _been_ there. He could have ...

I felt like I could take Julian right of his feet. He looked at me in surprise, but that was it. He shimmered, and I slumped back down to the ground in a heap, releasing him.

"This isn't real," I told him. I didn't bother to listen to his answer about where he'd been. I don't think he gave me one.

"This can't be happening to me."

"Evelyn."

He squeezed that hand into my shoulder, and white noise started to fill up the room.

"It isn't real."

Gray drowned out my thoughts, filling them up like water until my head was full to bursting.

"Evelyn!"

There was the rush of sound like thunder, crushing in from everywhere all at once. I felt it electrify me from without.

"Snap out of it!"

It drowned out Julian and those angry people outside too.

"It isn't real ..."

I squeezed my eyes shut.

"E-Ev?"

Everything died in an instant. Then it was just silent. The roar evaporated like it had never been.

Someone was squeezing my head.

"Snap out of it, Ev."

My eyes snapped back open. They were filled with tears for some reason. I think it was for that spectral voice inside my skull. It had echoed, and echoed ... until things finally stopped shaking all around.

When I finally looked up, it was a familiar blob of pink I saw there floating in the haze.

"What ...?"

I swiped at my eyes as fast as I could to see, but that ghost didn't go away. No. She stayed. I tried to look through her like I had Julian. But she didn't shimmer at all.

At that sudden sight of Tess - alive, and not some headless corpse - everything abruptly settled back into place. The grayness dried up to nothing and there were just walls again.

I blinked around the room.

Those two men were the only bodies on the floor.

"It's going to be okay, Ev," Tess was mumbling harshly in my ear. "It's going to be okay ..."

I came back around and looked at the other woman. Her face was pale, but not dead. Her body was shivering. But not dead.

I snatched at her head of a sudden, absolutely certain it would just ... come right off. But it didn't. And I couldn't find the bloody seams with my fingers on her throat.

"... _Ev_!"

My hands flung back away from her as soon as I realized what I was doing. They'd been trying to choke her. I don't know why.

"Tess?"

"Yeah ..." She gulped, giving me a wide-eyed once-over.

"Are you ..."

I tried to make words come out of my mouth, but I wasn't quite sure what I needed to ask. I felt off-balance. I felt like I was losing my mind.

Tess kept giving me that look. She eventually changed the subject of it, though, and decided to glance at those two corpses on the floor instead.

"You, uh, ... do you think they were alone?"

I kept waiting for her to vanish, or her head to roll off, or ... something. I couldn't believe it. And I don't know why I kept waiting for that to happen like I wanted it to.

"Whaddyou think they wanted?"

I didn't know. I had murdered those two men, but I didn't really care. They'd killed Tess.

They'd _killed _Tess.

I don't know how long I would have stayed like that, but I couldn't stop staring at her like she might just evaporate into thin air or fall into pieces on me again. I abruptly realized that Julian was there, though, and not where he had been. He was on the opposite side of the room., poring over the corpse of the man I'd shot on the floor.

"Vat the hell izz going on in the-ah!"

There were people outside the door still. I heard them, and I heard Matthias call tentatively into the room like he was afraid of what he might find. I thought he should have some idea from the corpse I'd shot up in the hallway, but then I looked that way and realized it wasn't there anymore. Someone had pulled it back inside the room.

Julian? I stared at it a few seconds longer. Then I noticed the hole burnt through its stomach. Not its back.

That wasn't ... right.

The Eluvian checked their vitals. I noticed the other dead man was exactly where I'd left him. I also noticed there was a blood and fire stain on the inside of the room where I'd blown the one's guts out - not past the door into the hallway.

Julian grabbed something from one of those corpses and got up.

"Come on," was all he said. I'm not sure where he thought he was going as he trudged past toward the door, but Tess was right behind him. She tugged me up from the ground along with her, and suddenly stopped.

"Where did you ... how ...?"

I blinked back up at her. She was looking down at my hand where the firebolt was.

Except, it couldn't have been the firebolt. Because Tess held out the same gun in her own hand right next to mine.

"I saw you grab that weird gun he was carrying," she told me. I glanced at the man I'd eviscerated with molten fire over on the floor and noticed the hole in his guts was about as big as the one the needle gun had made in the wall when he'd shot at me. Not like the firebolt pistol I'd had.

"Where'd you get _that_?"

I couldn't answer her, though. Because I wasn't sure anymore.


	61. 303 Better Off Dead

"You look like you saw a ghost ... or something."

I glanced back at Tess. She was putting up a brave smile - for herself, or me, I couldn't tell. She was still pretty shaken up from the whole thing. Me, I didn't know what I was supposed to be feeling right about now.

"I did," I said instead. And I looked right at her when I said it.

"Oookay."

We were in the kitchens downstairs. Matthias was trying to keep us out of sight and getting on Julian again over what had happened upstairs. It would have been me and Tess, but the Eluvian had tried to ward him off. Apparently the bartender didn't like people shooting up his bar. I'd gotten the full story straight myself only after a few minutes of listening to Tess and Julian. And it wasn't at all how I remembered it happening.

Some details were the same. Those two men broke into the room with Tess and tried to kill her. I must have still heard the gunshot and come running. I took down the one, and shot the other. But that was about it. The rest of what Tess told me was different.

She said she'd pulled the pistol on them when they burst in and tried to shoot her. Tried to anyways. She fumbled it and shot a few holes in the wood floor instead. They managed to get past her, and pin her to the ground. But she'd been alive when they tried to cut off her head. Alive enough to kick the one with the cutter in the knee when I came in.

I had gotten them off her, just like before. I beat up the first one and disarmed him. I hadn't had my own pistol then. That was what Tess said, and she kept twisting the one I had now over and over in her hands trying to figure out how it had changed from the needle gun I took from the first guy. It was the needle gun I'd shot the other man with. And the first when he grabbed the cutter from the floor to throw at us. I hadn't cracked his head hard enough to knock him out this time.

That was what she told me. But that wasn't what I remembered.

Why wasn't that what I remembered?

Tess should have been dead, but she wasn't. I should have been holding her lifeless corpse, but it was gone as soon as I'd opened my eyes.

"Ev?"

I must have gone crazy. What else could it possibly be?

"Hey. Ev."

Tess' hand was on my shoulder. She was looking me in the eyes, trying to get my attention.

"It's going to be okay, okay?" she said with a smile for me. I could still see the terrified tears in her eyes from before. "We're okay now. We're going to be okay. Just ... okay?"

I stared at her. I didn't want to tell her that she was wrong because I didn't know _how_ she was wrong. I didn't understand it at all.

Maybe she thought _I_ was the one who needed consoling. I guess I was. At least, a little bit. But I hadn't been the one who'd gotten my head cut off. And there was this little manic tick in her eye. She was barely holding it together.

Julian stalked his way back over then, looking even more grim and irritated than before. His eyes kept darting back at Matthias standing on the other side of the room, and it looked like that argument had escalated.

"Well?" Tess blurted out when the Eluvian just stood there thinking it over for a minute without opening his mouth.

"He wants us gone," was what he said when he finally did. It was quiet, and low so the bartender couldn't hear. Julian gave each of us a hard once-over. "Tonight. He thinks it's our fault this happened."

There was a brief moment of silence before Tess' incredulous, "_What_?"

"Apparently those two men came in here looking for you," Julian said. "He spoke to them down at the bar earlier, and told them where to find you."

"What-?" I started, but Tess ran right over me.

"He told them where we were?"

That dropped flat out of her mouth. Right before Tess suddenly boiled over red and blotchy white in places, fists balled and shaking down at her sides.

"He told them he didn't want any trouble."

"He _told_ them!" she cried.

And Julian weathered her sudden rush like a veteran.

"He sent those two up to our room! I mean, we just almost got _killed_," she screeched at him. I knew she'd been trying to keep herself under control and calm, but she wasn't very good at it. And no one had ever tried to kill her before. I guess that made _me _the experienced one.

"Now where are we supposed to go? The train doesn't leave until tomorrow night!"

Julian opened his mouth to say something, but she just pushed right past him.

"Hey! Asshole! Yeah, _you_!" she started screaming at Matthias instead. "What the fuck do you expect us to do? Just go out there and hope you don't send any other murdering psychopaths our way? No-o-o! I say we stay right here until morning and make sure you don't do another goddamned thing!"

The man's eyes popped at her suddenly launching at him all a-fury, but his whole face went dark when she continued on.

"Whaddidyou say to those guys? Tell 'em to come up and rob us? Kill us?" she stabbed a finger at his face. "Just get rid of the weirdos from space for me, okay? They're eating all my food and smelling up my room!

"Yeah, FUCK YOU!" she snapped.

"Theresa!"

Julian snatched her arm back before the bulky Matthias could take a swing at her. I don't know if he actually would have, but he certainly looked like he could. And the way Tess was getting all up in his face all of a sudden, I wouldn't have been surprised. I couldn't be after everything that had already happened. She spun around and launched on him instead.

"Don't fucking call me that! Where the hell were you while those assholes were trying to gun down Ev and me? Huh! Where the hell were _you_!"

There was some kind of commotion outside in the main room. We all heard it as the front doors must have swung open. They hit the hinges loud enough for the sound to reach the back. A few seconds later, and the room started getting quiet as someone shouted for Matthias. Something about it took the wind right out of Tess' hysterics.

For a second there, I thought Julian might take a swing at her too. He looked like he might, and I wondered what I could do if he did. But Tess broke down before he could do anything like that. She collapsed into a fit full of tears and flopped away toward a counter top, burying her face there.

"_Fuck_!" she wailed into a hand.

Julian looked at her. Then Matthias. And the barkeep just stuck a finger at him.

"Tonight. I mean it."

Then the man tore away through door back toward the front.

"Vat!"

It was quiet then for us in the back. Julian came back around from staring after Matthias, slowly. He looked at me first, then Tess. But I'd just been sitting there the whole time. Watching.

"Where were you, Jules," came the pitiful sobbing of a sudden from Tess' direction before the Eluvian could open his mouth to say anything. "Where were you ..."

"Scouting your train," was his answer.

"What ...?"

Tess lifted herself back off the counter to look at him, red-eyed and a mess. Funny to see her go to pieces like that so fast, especially after trying to keep _me_ from falling apart on her. But I couldn't really blame her. I couldn't.

I think Julian was wrapping his head around just how messed up his situation was right about then. Stuck with two young women about ready to come apart at the seams. Stranded on some moon. Murderers coming after them with guns. That thing in the woods.

Tess had tried to keep it together, but she cracked under how close she'd come to getting her head chopped off. And me? I didn't know what to even _start_ to think about me. I was some whole other place away.

"I think we can get out on it," Julian offered after another pause. "You might've been right about that."

I didn't know if he was just trying to butter her up and calm her down or what, but it worked. A little. She swiped at her face and eyes with an arm, and started to compose herself again. She was still standing there in only a shirt and pants without shoes.

"Okay ..." she sniffed, and tried to laugh. "So, what do we do now?"

"First thing," he started again. "Those two weren't after you. Or us."

"What?" Tess finally listened.

Then he looked at me.


	62. 304 Dad Would Know

"What? What're you looking at her for?"

Tess asked. Julian didn't answer her, though. He just kept staring me down like he expected some sort of answer from me. But I didn't have one for him. I didn't have one for myself.

"Well?" she sniffed loudly. "What is it?"

Eventually, Tess got tired of waiting for him. He glanced at her, then pulled something out of his jacket. It looked like a comm.

He held the thing up in front of us. "I took this from one of the dead men who attacked you," he said "It's encrypted, but not well. I was able to piece together the last few messages at least. Do you know what they were?"

I stared back at him, but didn't say anything. I wasn't sure what he wanted me to say.

"Coordinates," he offered in flat tones. Expectantly. "For this town. And a description. For you, since there aren't any other off-world women running around here with hair and eyes that particular color."

"_Her_ color? What about me?"

Tess had still barely picked herself back up from losing it a minute ago, but that shakiness got buried in those leading questions. Leading me, that is. He was fishing for an answer in my eyes and I think he got it a couple seconds later when it suddenly dawned on me just why someone might have been looking for me at all.

I started shaking myself. As I watched, the hand I'd brought to my face was trembling. It was a bit surreal, being as numb just then from overload as I was. My body still felt the shock and surprise, but I couldn't interpret it intellectually. I felt almost entirely detached from the whole thing like I was just watching someone else do it for me.

"Wh-why did they attack Tess, then?" I heard myself ask. But that wasn't the real question inside my head. It was why had they tried to take her head.

I couldn't ever admit to that, though.

"You tell me," was all Julian said.

"I don't know."

I couldn't look at him anymore. Or Tess. Flashbacks to the cruiser in space, that man trying to take me from dad, and that black sword stabbed right through him instead. Someone had come for Tess, but they were looking for me. I'd seen her die right in front of me, and it had all been because of me. Again.

But she was alive now. Right?

Dad was dead. She wasn't. I had saved her somehow.

Right?

I guess I really didn't know just what to think anymore.

"How did they find me?" my mouth asked next. Julian was still studying me with that penetrating eye. That man from the cruiser couldn't have found me all the way out here. Could he? I was lost somewhere even I didn't know where.

It wasn't so far from where we had been, though. Dad never really told me where we were going either, but he had told me to look for someone in a place called Lyricum. Those coordinates he'd had me punch into the life pod were supposed to take me there. Was that this moon? I hadn't thought to ask any locals yet, and I had no idea how I was supposed to find anyone somewhere lost on an entire moon. But that man from the cruiser had managed to find us, and I don't think dad had thought he could. He'd caught dad by surprise, and he was dead now because of it. Maybe he could find me too.

"I'd say someone called in about your friend here poking around government property and looking pretty foreign and out of place," he speculated. "I'd have to break the encryption on the rest of his communications to be sure, but I recognized a few more simple datapoints. Numbers and money, I think."

"_Money_?"

Julian nodded at Tess. She was twisting the whole idea of it around in her head like it didn't make any sense. I guess it wouldn't - to her.

"These weren't security agents, and I doubt they'd hire contract killers just to investigate a strange girl asking questions."

"So _what _then?" Tess prodded. "Just spit it out, Jules."

"Bounty hunters," was what he concluded. And he left it at that just for me.

I sat with that thought in my head for a while, trying to just think around it. It was hard. Everything since leaving home had started to look and feel like one long nightmare that I kept hoping I would just wake up from. Dad was dead. Tess was too ... sort of. And everything else just felt like it was slipping wildly away around me.

Again, Tess broke in before I could think too far down that path.

"You're kidding, right?" She practically laughed. "Bounty hunters? Like in the vids, seriously? I mean, why the hell would anyone want to pay to find Ev?"

"Why are you asking me?" Julian threw back at her. "I don't even know you two, or anything about you. This is _your_ problem-"

But Tess gasped right over him, not listening.

"Wait. You don't think this has anything to do with those messages your dad got right before we left ... do you?"

I just frowned at that.

"What?"

She clamped up, though, thinking. I shook my head angrily at that, flipping a hand. Julian looked from one of us to the other.

"_What_, Tess?"

"I don't know," she finally admitted, twisting her head back and forth. "I got into old Weirdo's inbox and read something about some people being after you. He said two were on Riftwatch right before we left. I dunno if that makes any sense, but ... you think it might have been those two, uh, upstairs?"

I blinked at her, and then stared. Tess had a bad habit of getting into places she didn't belong, and it didn't surprise me that she had hacked into dad's stuff. I went along for the ride sometimes even. But ...

"No."

"What?" she asked, a little incredulous. "Come on. That has to be it!"

"No." I shook my head again.

Those two upstairs were different. If he had said there were two people on Riftwatch looking for me back then - then they had been those two who attacked me. I hadn't killed them, but the two upstairs were different. More professional, I think. I guess.

I don't know.

"Did," I started, but I had a hard time following through. I looked Tess in the eyes and managed to do it, though.

"Did he say why they wanted ... me?"

My breath caught for just a second. That was as long as it took for Tess to shake her head. She didn't know. She had no idea, no more than I did. Who could expect her to?

But there weren't just two. Probably more than those four already. How could we know? Who would? Dad, maybe. And who would want to come after _me_? Why would anyone care?

Dad would know. But dad was dead.

"What do we do?"

I asked it this time. I looked up to Julian standing there watching and listening to us. I think he was satisfied with my genuine lack of understanding about the whole situation, even if he still held fast to that suspicion in the back of his head. I looked up to him because he hadn't lost his mind in all this mess. Tess was an emotional wreck teaming just below a thin, easily distracted surface. Me, I was pretty sure I was just crazy. But Julian, whoever he was, was about the closest thing to sanity still maybe willing to help us get out of there.

I waited, and eventually he opened his mouth.

"We'll take our chances with the train tonight and see what we can manage," he told us. "Go get dressed. Get yours things too. We're getting out of here."


	63. 305 Parasitic

It was while Tess and I were alone back in the room that I started to wonder what Julian might do now that he found out someone might pay to bring me to them. I was worth a lot of money - that's what those men who attacked me back home had said. That's what the man on the cruiser must have wanted. And that's what those two corpses still lying out on the floor had been after when they came out here. I don't think they cared if I was dead or alive.

Julian didn't know us, and we didn't know him. Somehow we'd just gotten stuck together trying to get back to civilization. And we were almost there. So I wondered just what he might do about it when the time came.

Tess noticed me just standing there, and stopped herself.

"What's wrong?"

I laughed. I couldn't help it. And Tess gave me a weird look when I did. Then I shook my head.

"Nothing."

We both avoided those bodies and pretended like they weren't even there.

I got changed, but I couldn't shake the feeling of those mens' blood on me. It had been worse on the transport cruiser. It had been worse when it was dad's blood. Somehow, I kept getting it on me and it just wouldn't come off. I was scrubbing at imaginary stains on my skin in the bathroom for a good while again for not the first time since we'd gotten there.

Tess got dressed. I found her trying to straighten her strawberry hair back out in front of the antique-looking woodframe mirror that one of the dead men had managed to crack and splatter his blood on when he went down. I think she'd been there for a while, just like me in the bathroom. She had a feverish look in her eye; she just couldn't get herself to look straight again.

I touched her arm with a hand and she jumped.

She screamed back at me in surprise, then took one last look in the mirror. "I - I don't even know what to do about it ..."

"Let's just go," was all I said, and she nodded her head reluctantly. That got us out of the room at least.

I couldn't help but notice myself in that busted glass, though. My eyes looked sunken and the rest of me a pale, worn and beaten mess. So different from the last time I'd caught a glimpse of myself back home that, for a second, I thought there was someone else in the room with us. Terrible, raw, and ugly, from everything that had happened since home. I wondered why Julian even bothered with us.

When we got back downstairs, the Eluvian man wasn't waiting for us in the back like he was supposed to be. I heard some people shouting out front as we passed, but wasn't paying much attention to that. I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible now - slip quietly out the back while we still could and get away. But when we couldn't find Julian, Tess hurried out front. I followed her, and we both came up short.

"What's going on, Jules?"

Tess tugged at the Eluvian man's arm. He was standing there staring at that group of townspeople gathered around one table and shouting intermittently at each other now. It took me a few seconds, but I realized they had someone up on that table that I couldn't see past all the bodies. A few others were scattered about just standing and watching like we were.

That man on the table was making some of the strangest groaning noises I'd ever heard in my life. Not very human anyways. Tess tried to get a closer look, but I knew immediately that I didn't want anything to do with it. I caught one look at the man's arm as it flopped down between some of those standing around him and that was all I needed.

"Can we go?" I whispered frantically at Julian's back. "Please? Now?"

But I had to compete with Tess' suddenly confused, quaky voice at it.

"Wh-what are they doing to him?" was Tess' response to that brief flash of sickly pale skin, black throbbing spiderweb veins, and all those noises. But I didn't think anyone else there knew any better what was going on than we did.

Julian tore his eyes away long enough to glance at the front door, then me and Tess. He started to move, and I was already on his heels.

"Come on, Tess!" I grabbed at her standing shocked and silent there, staring.

But then that man on the table spoke.

_LIGHT_.

And we all stopped dead in our tracks behind Julian.

The voice that slithered out of that sick man's mouth slammed into me full force like something physical. It was otherwordly and familiar, grating and grinding like rent gears and metal. Something sinister that opened up a pit deep in my stomach that I could fall right through. I saw Tess go pale.

"Light? The lights are on! There's plenty of light," came Matthias' voice above the uproar, overwhelmed and distraught.

"Maybe ... maybe he means turn them off!" someone suggested frantically. It was probably the stupidest thing to think just then. Whatever that voice might have wanted, it wasn't anything anyone should have given it.

"Vat the hell would he want that for?"

"I don't fahking know - you tell me!"

But, "Fine, try it then!" was what Matthias fumbled and spat out. "But bring me a light to see!" The other man who had spoken broke free of the pack and rushed towards the wall.

I stumbled back behind Julian, putting him between me and the rest of the room while a wayward hand tugged at his jacket. He didn't notice me, though, and neither did Tess. It was hard not to just fall into a stunned, helpless silence like everyone else at the thrashing noises that thing on the table was making.

The man who'd gone for them managed to hit the lights, and they dimmed down to nothing. And, for the first time since we got there, the whole bar went absolutely quiet.

Mostly anyways. There was still Matthias and those others trying to hold the man down. He had gone quiet too.

"Deeter?" came the bartender's frantic voice. "Deeter? Deeter, can you hear me?"

He must have been crouched over that man on the table when it abruptly started convulsing in the dark.

"Deeter!" Matthias yelled. "Someone! Light! Now!"

"He just turned them off!"

"Well I can't see a fucking thing! Get me a torch!"

People were stumbling over each other in the dark. Dim starlight from outside was letting me start to adjust, but Tess, Julian, and I just stood there.

Then there was a gasp of surprise – cut short and followed by the sound of someone choking.

"Matthias?"

Something crashed into the floor. So did a few people, tumbling down and crying out angrily or in surprise too. Someone else sparked a light, and for a brief moment, we all saw that thing on the table wearing half a man's twisted, broken face.

The breath that caught in my throat at the sight of it felt collective.

It howled a throatless cry, and dashed the shocked man holding the light to pieces. Then the whole place went dark again.


	64. 306 Stalker

For a second, I couldn't move. And in that second I heard some of the worst things I had ever heard in my life going on in the dark.

Yelling. Screaming. Blood being splattered and those same screams cutting off abruptly.

People died. I heard them. The sound of soft flesh and brittle bone hacked wetly apart where I couldn't see. It made me flinch. It made my blood run cold and the rest of me go shock-still like death had suddenly appeared and grabbed a hold of me. I couldn't see it. But I could feel it.

Like back on the cruiser. Only this time ... it was all happening right there in front of me. Not off somewhere echoing in the dark out of reach. I could run as long as there was a distance between us. Not here, though. I felt it on top of me, butchering everyone else like meat. So I just stood there, waiting for my turn to come next.

Julian was the one that moved.

Light pierced the darkness like a knife into hell. It poured out from the fixture on the his rifle, slicing away at those shadows so sharp and sudden that it seemed to burn.

The black, too-smooth and angular back of what was left of that man from the table was the first thing caught in Julian's ring of light. It was bent over, looking like it was eating something. The weapon sang and bolts of electric fire punched out across the room at it. But the thing had howled and slipped out of sight before he'd even pulled the trigger. It skittered away into the dark again.

Julian fired after it, twisting around. He missed, but I barely noticed. That light sweeping across the room gave me an eyeful of a dozen slaughtered bodies. Everyone else from the bar that had been standing around that table.

They were all dead.

Tess had the right idea. She bolted.

Firebolts lit up the room behind one after another as I twisted around and threw myself in the opposite direction of where I thought that thing had gone. Too bad it was away from the front door and outside. There was still the back door, though. That was what I flew towards as I shot out of the room right on top of Tess' heels.

Tess veered left. I didn't. She peeled away and I was left skipping ahead.

Tess stomped right up the stairs, tripping all over herself as she went. I managed to catch myself and spin around, screaming after her. I couldn't breathe, though, so I just threw myself back at the steps too. I saw Julian firing away in the front room still, turning about in an arc back toward where we were. But right before he could, something loomed up in front of the kitchen door right in front of my face.

My feet tried to fly out from under me. Somehow, I flung myself over into the stairs instead - right as that thing swiped in for me. I forgot Julian. I forgot Tess. And I forgot myself. Those steps fell under my hands and feet as my body clawed its way up them as fast as it could.

Blood thumping, and deperate panting filled my ears. A fleshless shriek ripped in at the coat on my back from behind. I felt it like a physical thing - tearing at me. Heart inside my throat and stairs swimming in my eyes. Hands scratched and splintered, legs flying wild with knees catching the lip. I didn't feel that. All I could feel was that thing right behind me, trying to snatch me back down into the dark.

Suddenly I was at the top and Tess was there, latching onto my arm and pulling me into the upstairs hall toward our abandoned room. I nearly pulled her back over and down with me in surprise, but I was too stiff and paralyzed. She tripped over the door, kicking it wide and stumbling in with me dragging behind her. Then she flopped over the bed face-first, diving toward the far corner. I fell into the bathroom door, twisting back around and unable to breathe.

For a few seconds, it was just the sound of both of us panting aloud in that cramped room. Tess didn't bother righting herself - lying there with her head crooked between the wall and the floor and half under the bed. She just managed to cast a finger at me.

"... the door!" she gasped out.

I was already throwing myself at it before she could even open her mouth, though. I thought about the Eluvian man as I fumbled my trembling hands with the old maglock controls, but I knew. He was already dead too.

"Oh _god_," Tess cried out when it was done, and I stumbled back, "Jules!" She must have been echoing my thoughts and realized where we had left him just as well as I did.

I had a sinking feeling all over as I staggered back into the corner of the bathroom doorframe again. My heart had settled somewhere between my chest and my neck, trying to gag me as my body went cold. I had flashes of all those people down there. Butchered pieces of bloody meat. Just like the ones on the ship ...

"Ev ..."

The quiet sound of Tess' voice from behind brought me back abruptly in a rush. I'd lost a few seconds, and I'd almost lost myself again.

"What?"

"We just ... we just," she struggled, mouth bobbing open and lip trembling. Her face was pale and blotchy, wide-eyed and terrified. In shock.

Her voice dropped down to a harsh whisper.

"... _Left_ him down there."

I checked the lock on the door again - nothing like the ones back home on Riftwatch. Those magnetic seals weren't meant to keep research hidden away. The door wasn't designed to hold up to vacuum, and I didn't know if it could hold back that thing. It must have come from the cruiser. It must have been one of those monsters that tore the whole thing apart. It must have followed me all the way down there and somehow gotten inside that man downstairs and-

I cast around the room for something - _anything_ - before I remembered the pistol I still had in my coat pocket. The duplicate to the one Tess had taken from me. I fumbled around with shaky hands until I found it.

I glanced back at Tess, and she was looking at me like I was crazy, tears glinting in the corners of her eyes. That didn't stop her from scrambling to get her own gun free from the pack on her back. She even managed to climb back to her feet.

"Wh-what are we gonna do, Ev?" she asked me. As if I had any clue. Those two dead bounty hunters were still in there - starting to make the place stink like meat. I shook my head, trying not to think about all the dead people piling up in that place around me.

"I ... I don't know!"

Something slammed into the door.

I'm not sure who screamed - Tess, or me. Maybe both. I lost a step and she tried to scrunch herself down into the corner. Then we both went dead quiet.

If there was any hope that it might have been Julian on the other side of that door, it was shattered in the next second when the metal snapped inward at the next blow. It warped and ground aloud. As I watched, a hole opened up at the deepest point. Then the thing just started hammering and slicing into it full force. And I couldn't help imagining those men downstairs as it ripped them all to pieces.

Tess was the first one to pull her gun, but we both started firing wildly at the door and the wall around then. Bolts of fire hissed into steal, bursting into molten flame and punching holes right through the metal. Pulses of fire flashed in a sudden fury, inundating the dim lights in the room as we let loose on anything and everything in a frantic three-meter radius around that door until it was nothing more than a smoldering piece of melting steel. Then we stood there, breathing heavy and still as everything went quiet again.

"... did we get it?"

I didn't look at Tess. I couldn't peel my eyes away from the door - what was left of it. Waiting with my breath catching inside my throat. She eventually fixed back on it too, pistol still stuck out in front of her and shaking in her hands. I wasn't much better. Still, she screamed before I did.

That thing burst right through the molten metal. The door came apart in steel shards, scattering into the room. And I think I must have panicked, because the next thing I knew - I had locked myself inside the bathroom.


	65. 307 Out the Window

Something clawed at the window behind me, and I twisted back around. Tess was there. For a second, I thought I'd abandoned her back in the room.

It was a terrible thought.

"I think we can get through it!" she cried back at me, yanking at the latches and trying to twist the small porthole back. She put her whole body into it and I just watched.

The bathroom door jumped back against its hinges. I flinched and nearly lost my pistol. Tess caught her breath and froze.

"Shoot it!" I managed to blurt out at her.

She spun around and pointed her own gun at the glass. A hole melted through it almost instantly, and the faint hiss of the evening wind outside swept in.

"Open the door!" we both heard come from the other side of that door, and stopped.

The banging continued, focused and intent. Not violent and murderous like before. Nothing tried to slice right through like before.

"Jules?" Tess whispered back, almost too stunned to speak. He couldn't have heard her, but I'd already unlocked the door and pulled it back open by then. And the Eluvian man was standing there with his rifle in one hand. I half-expected him to bust in with that thing right behind him, but he just grabbed me by the arm and tried to haul me outside.

"Come on," he snapped at Tess. "Hurry!"

"Where'd it go?" Tess demanded instead, shaking her head. I didn't want to go back out there either.

She got her answer a second later, though. When what was left of the glass behind her burst in and scattered jagged shards everywhere.

Something reached inside, shrieking as it did. Into the low bathroom light. It sliced the air at the other woman's back and she screamed, collapsing down into the side of the wall beneath the broken window. It howled after her, inky skin twisting in the light and smoking. And I had a nightmarish moment of paralysis as it grabbed at Tess.

Sound bled away. I watched it go, and things slowed down. Long, spiney fingers crept through the air out of the night toward the other woman. I watched as they did.

The world exploded next to my ear. Then everything came rushing back.

Julian had a flurry of shots burning holes into the night outside before Tess had even hit the ground.

The thing vanished. I stood there staring after it, but couldn't see anything outside through the window in the dark. Had he hit it? Everything happened so fast, it was hard to think. I didn't think so. But he scared it off.

"Move," he ordered Tess again, letting me go to dart in and yank her up himself. He pulled the bathroom door shut behind us, pushing us away. A shot from his rifle blew the control pad next to it. I wondered if he realized how easily that thing had cut through before, but he just got in front with the rifle facing the broken door at the front of the room.

I looked out into the hallway, my skin chilled over and crawling. Shadows lapped at the corners of the broken door, flickering like they were alive. They could have been. That thing could have been anywhere now. I could still see that one bony-looking, distended black limb reaching inside to snatch at Tess.

Julian ducked under the broken door, sweeping either way down the hallway with the light on his rifle. Then he beckoned us with a hand.

Neither Tess nor me were moving. Julian tried to push ahead but quickly left us behind. My whole body shook. Tess wasn't much better. I glanced back at her and she looked like she'd gone catatonic. I wondered if I had too. It felt like it.

There were a few seconds there where Julian just stood there then, looking unsure just what to do. I could read all the thoughts rippling across his tattooed face for a moment, buried just beneath the surface.

Then he lowered his rifle and stepped back inside.

"Just stay behind me," he said, putting a firm hand on my shoulder. Then he moved on to Tess. "Alright? You'll make it. Just keep up with me.

"Hey." He looked Tess right in the eyes, shaking her until she looked up at him. "Theresa." She finally blinked. There were tears there. "I need you to keep your eyes open and stay with me. You can do that. I know you can."

She stared at him for a few seconds, unregistering. Eventually, something snapped back into her, though, because she managed to nod her head, shaking as bad as she was. The Eluvian man slung his rifle, and took her hand firmly in his. Then he pulled a pistol in the other and started toward the door again.

I wanted to ask why. The enormity of it all crashed around me like waves against a rock, leaving me feeling like an oasis of clarity stuck outside time. I wanted to know why he had come back for us. Why he hadn't run as soon as we left him behind downstairs. Why he was still even there with something like that chasing us around.

I watched him and Tess push past me in slow motion like I wasn't even there. Him, leading and undaunted by all those horrors we'd seen and were still running loose somewhere out of sight just waiting to tear us to shreds. - How couldn't they terrify him? - Her, looking accidentally beautiful in that frail, helpless, and distraught state. She was barely a ghost but he'd die for her anyways. And _he_ couldn't be killed.

It was surreal for a moment. And I felt something. Something dark.

"E-Ev?"

They'd left me behind. Tess' cracking voice snapped me back from wherever I'd been. I was still inside the room. Alone. I felt a shiver sweep through me from head to toe. Then I slipped outside where they were waiting.


	66. 308 First Class

We made it outside. I'm not sure how and I'm not sure why - but that thing didn't come back for us right away. Julian led us back down the stairs again, pistol free and tracking every shadow that moved. It had been fast. I thought - too fast for even him. But there was that paranoid, selfish hope that he might give us the chance to run again if it caught him first, and I couldn't rationalize that thought away from me in that moment.

Some of the people from downstairs had been alive when Tess and I took off. We found one of them still bleeding out, his face smeared in choked up blood and belly ripped wide open. There was nothing we could do for him, was all Julian had said when he caught us staring. He still went over to him like he would do something, though. Crouched down in front of his pain-stricken, terrified eyes while we watched. Then, before either of us had realized it, he'd pulled out a knife and plunged it right into the man's chest.

I think he died almost instantly. I needed to think that, as I watched Julian murder that man in cold blood right in front of us. Tess tensed up next to me, eyes wide. Her mouth hung there, open, and unable to move.

"Keep quiet, and keep moving," was all the Eluvian man had said when he brushed back past us. He'd still had the pistol. There was the displaced thought in my head for why he hadn't just used that. I suppose the knife had been quieter.

"You killed him," the other woman had breathed out then, still staring. I'd barely heard her, but Julian twisted his head back around.

"He was already dead. Keep up."

Tess hadn't, though. I'd had to pull her away from eying that corpse, and watch her come apart that much more at the seams. I took a good look around at the dead ones as I did. Some of them looked like they'd had a huge chunk or two bit out of them. I tried not to let Tess see.

I didn't undestand why we made it out of there alive. Not until I heard the not-so-distant screaming in the town.

We came up short.

"Oh my god," Tess gasped out when she heard them, staring off into the night. Those sounds shook her free of her stupor for a second. "W-what is ...?" She pointed one, feeble hand out that way, turning a shock-frozen look of desperation back on me. But I wasn't sure what to say.

"We killed them," I breathed out loud beside her. I'm not sure where the thought came from, but it weighed down so right on me of a sudden that I felt it crushing my guts. That thing was here because of us. Because of _me_. It had followed me out of my nightmares to the ship, and then down here.

"I killed them."

My hands started trembling all on their own.

"How did it find us?" Tess whimpered right over me like she hadn't heard. She was still pleading. "How did it follow us all the way here?"

"Jules!" she snapped wildly past my shoulder at Julian when he didn't answer right away. He had been looking the other way and only gave the screams a passing glance.

"I don't know, but you'd better forget about them if you want to stay alive."

That threw Tess again. Like him executing that man back there had. Her face froze again in that distraught, horrified expression for a few seconds before she could open her mouth. And when she did, it was like she hadn't even heard a word he said - her brain had just reset.

"How did it _get_ here?"

"What do you want us to do?" I broke in instead.

"We have to get back to that train."

"We have to do something!" Tess wailed at him, stabbing a hand back at the town. "We can't just ... just ..."

His brow lowered, and those flint-like eyes leveled on her. They clamped her mouth shut.

"Come on," Julian growled, grabbing her bodily. She was too stunned to struggle. He just gave me a look and I fell in behind.

We spent the rest of that night in one of the cars of the train.

I'd never seen a locomotive before in person. The real thing was somehow more impressive than I imagined and less than I thought it should be. Neither Tess nor me got too excited about that idle metal behemoth hovering suspended from the ground in a near-frictionless state, though. Julian said it was a light freight model, built for carrying tons of cargo. Thick, durable, titanium alloys. Tess just pulled out her pad and tried to get a door open despite her numb, shaky fingers.

My skin crawled all over while we waited. I felt like that thing would come hurtling out of the darkness at us at any moment while she did, and I tried to put my back to the steel monster with Julian between me and the dark of night. We heard screams. Heart-wrenching screams from the town, as people died. Too bad most of us were far too gone to notice, or care.

Tess did eventually manage to get the thing open, and we never saw anything more of that thing before we got inside. Julian locked us in one of the front cars that managed to open and we bunkered down for the rest of the night to the muted sounds of death outside.

After an hour or two, we just stopped hearing them any more.


	67. 309 All Aboard

The first sensation I had when I woke back up was a hand closing over my mouth. The next was that Eluvian man's face in mine as I jerked away struggling. He put a finger to his lips and tried to calm me down.

It was quiet. Warm too. The cabin we locked ourselves in had been meant for freight, not people, and it was stuffy and stank with us spending the night in it. The ventilation was for the people going in and out, leaving the air heavy and stale. But we were still alive.

I looked over at Tess, who was still huddled next to me where we'd fallen asleep. Her eyes were deep, and haunted. I wondered how bad mine looked. Probably worse.

The car was mostly empty. The floor was dirty with whatever had been in it before, but that was about it. We might have escaped back into the train proper, but the door to the freight compartment we hid ourselves in was sealed tight to the inside with something Tess couldn't tap into. She'd been able to get the outside door open, though. That lock had been older and less secure for some reason that I didn't really care about, but surprised Tess.

Julian had eased his way back over to the doors, crouched down. He gave us one pointed look before carefully unsealing the manual lock. Those cars weren't really meant for people, looking like they unloaded from the top with some heavy machinery. I guess they hadn't been too worried about people breaking in.

The Eluvian cracked the door as quietly as he could while we watched. And he sat there for a long time, looking out.

"Well?" Tess whispered hoarsely at him when he didn't turn back around for that while. He didn't answer, though. Just stuck a hand back at us sharply in response.

"What is it?" I asked before Tess could. And the door snapped back.

Julian lost his footing. He'd been leaning hard against the thing as it shifted. He caught himself, pistol in hand. But not before another gun was pointed at his head.

There was a moment where Tess and I watched helplessly as someone in a battered uniform leveled the barrel of a rifle on Julian. And I saw it bursting apart with molten flame in my mind's eye before it even happened, like seeing the future a split second out. It wasn't the future that happened, though. Julian spun around where he was on the floor and shoved that gun barrel away before it could. And he had his pistol at the other man's throat instead.

They both froze. That man had his teeth clenched, not daring to move. Fair-haired and lightly colored eyes like most of the locals. His face was blotched and dirty, with a little blood. He looked like he'd been running all night and hid in a garbage compactor.

"What're you doing here?" he managed to spit out after a couple more seconds, eyes blinking around at each of us - especially Julian's gun.

"Drop it," was all the Eluvian said.

The man did. Fast too. I'd almost expected a little more bravado.

"What are you doing in here?" he asked again after Julian had taken his weapon. The Eluvian checked it over, popping the chamber to reveal a partially opaque round in there. The other man sounded rough and worn out - maybe as much as us. Those eyes flashed between each of us once more in turn - before doubling back on Tess.

"You're the offworld girl who was poking around the other day, yah?"

He seemed to recognize her of a sudden, but she didn't bother answering him.

"Can you get this train moving?" Julian snapped him back to attention on him. He looked like a caricature of a war hero in that worn-out military jacket and three weapons draped around him. "You have clearance, right?"

"No, I don't-" he started to say, and cut off abruptly at the Eluvian raising his pistol to shoot. The other man's hands came flying up instead.

"Yes! I, uhhh ... I think I can!"

He snatched at a cord around his neck, fishing out some metal card that was buried under the collar of his uniform and holding it away from him for Julian to see. The Eluvian regarded it for a moment.

"We'll see about that. Come on."

I didn't really want to go back out there. Outside the safety of the reinforced compartment. Into the town again. Daylight was just breaking now, casting the horizon with a gray-blue shimmer that hung heavy on the ground below. I looked up and could see a planet hovering off in the distance past a haphazard ring of scattered asteroids - the atmospheric generators they used on colonies like this not having kicked in with full-on morning yet to hide it behind a curtain of artificial light and weather. It would have been beautiful to see ...

... If the dead-still town crowding beneath it wasn't sitting there so ominously waiting for us.

Julian kept that man who'd found us at arm's length with his firebolt pointed at the back of his head while we got out. He didn't say a thing after we did, just shoved the man along the tracks toward the front of the train and got us moving. For a few minutes, Tess didn't say anything either - just stared at the deathly quiet town and followed behind.

We didn't need Tess to get into the control car this time - not that she'd had much luck the night before. That man who'd found us - I thought he must be one of those security officers for the train Julian had talked about - hurried up with the keycard from around his neck, the Eluvian following him the whole way with his rifle low in one hand, pistol at the back of the other's head. He'd slung the stolen gun across a shoulder. I had my own pistol in one hand, the other clutched tight to the compressed stick on my hip. Tess's own cloned firebolt hung apathetically low at her side.

As soon as the officer touched the door to the control car, it opened. I guess that was surprising since he stopped, and let his card fall. He hadn't even gotten a chance to use it.

"Did you come out of there?" Julian asked, pushing the barrel of his pistol into the man's skull roughly. The other stumbled a step, then shook his head.

"I was hiding ..." his hand wafted back behind him toward some industrial equipment that they must have used to load the cars.

Julian moved around him, keeping the rifle on the other while sneaking a look inside the control car with his pistol ready. It'd been locked last night, otherwise I think we would have taken off in the dark.

"You first," Julian canted his head toward the open door, looking back at the security officer. The man wasn't that much older than Tess or me, and was sweating in the cool, morning air. I decided he must have seen enough of what went on last night to be afraid. I don't think it would have taken much.

Tess and I waited outside in the quiet while those two went inside. I held my gun like Lieutenant Boyce had taught me, eyes darting all over the dead townscape. Only little things moved, though, wind ruffling anything loose. But I stuck that pistol at every single one. Tess just kind of stood there staring at it still, and I almost couldn't blame her. I tried to think I could shoot that thing if I saw it coming, but they never let you see them coming. I'd learned that much since the ship. The only thing to do was run, and neither the gun nor broad daylight made me feel any better about standing still there in the open. Too bad I'd been running this whole time and I never got far enough away.

"Do you think they're all dead?"

I looked over at Tess. She'd opened her mouth, watching beside me with deadpan eyes. She looked beaten - cowed, even. Like an abused animal. I didn't have an answer for her because I didn't know.

In the back of my head, though, I did. And it was an obvious yes.

Julian's head popped back out, making me jump. Tess barely noticed.

"Get in here," he said in a low voice, and I scrambled up there with Tess close behind.

The place was a mess. Control panels and consoles dotted the bulkheads all around, dimly-lit and looking dead. There was blood on the ground, and it looked like it had come from someone climbing in or dragged out - it was hard to tell at first. I guessed it was the former when I saw the body on the floor that the security officer was crouched over.

Julian shut the door behind us and then the only light in there was that coming through the long, slender ports at the front. I could see the town out through them.

"I ... I think he's still alive," the officer was saying on knees, looking up tentatively to the Eluvian.

Julian crossed the space between them and knelt down over to check the man's vitals. "Barely," was all he said, and moved on a moment later after giving him a good once-over. There were no marks on him like I would have thought. Just an old man looking like he'd been beaten. He had blood in his ears and nose so thick it looked black, and I wondered what could have done that. By now I expected people to just be cut apart.

"The engineer," was what the security officer said, a little in awe, before he started pawing at the man for another keycard. Then he leapt back to his feet excitedly. "I can get us out of here!"

Julian's pistol had never left him, and made itself pointedly known again as soon as the man made that sudden move. He came up short and had to wait for the Eluvian's grudging nod before he could scamper over toward the front controls. They flared to life at a swipe of that card and the man let out an anxious laugh in relief. He glanced back at us with a grin on his face like he'd just bought his life back from Julian. Glancing at the look on the Eluvian's face, though, it was hard to tell.

The panels all around us started to whir back to life, filling the room with light and humming. The half-dead engineer on the ground twitched, but that was the only sing of life out of him. A couple minutes later, and the whole train started moving, leaving that town full of dead people behind.


	68. 310 Verti-Go

"Evelyn."

I started breathing again.

"What?"

My eyes blinked over, startled back to life as sound rushed back in all at once, white noise faded, and the world came back. That Eluvian man was standing in front of me.

I must have spaced out ... or something. Everyone was suddenly somewhere different like I'd leapt forward in time. Julian was giving me a scrutinizing look.

"Weir," he continued. At first, I'd heard dad's voice. It changed to Julian's way too fast.

"That_ is_ your name. Right?"

I looked over at Tess, slumped in one of the control chairs and staring at nothing. That security officer - Richter, was what the badge on his battered coat read - looked like he'd found an emergency medkit and was trying to figure out what was wrong with the comatose engineer on the floor. I hoped they could keep that train going without him because he pretty much looked like a corpse already. They'd managed to get the thing started and moving, at least. The rest of it was usually automated ... right?

"What?" I came back around to Julian again. I'd forgotten what he'd said.

"Evelyn Weir," he asked again with some tried patience. I stared at him for a few seconds without blinking or comprehending. He continued on slowly.

"If that's right, then _this ... _had you identified by name."

He held up that comm unit he'd taken from the dead man back at the bar who'd attacked Tess. I finally blinked, and shook my head at it. I realized he was keeping his voice lower than usual and his back to the others. I guess he was trying not to let them see it or hear him or something like that. Why?

Oh, right. Richter.

"They were after you, and someone knew exactly what planet you'd be on. You crashed here, didn't you?"

That sounded about right. Though the abrupt flash of memory cut at me like a knife, and I winced.

"We were ... I was attacked."

I managed to shrug it off, feeling just a little uncomfortable at that sudden attention with what sounded like more leading questions like he'd been on about back at the bar before we tried to leave.

"The life pod took me here."

"Well this is old," he started in like he was just waiting for me to finish. Like he already knew the answer before he asked. "Older than your attack I'd guess, by at least a few weeks. Those two must have been waiting here in the main port all this time. For you, specifically," he added at the last.

"What ...?" I blinked up at him again. "How - how could they possibly know that?"

"You mean you don't know?" he countered, and threw me.

I looked back at him and I couldn't help cringing at the way he had been studying my every word and facial gesture, disecting me with those flint-like eyes. He didn't bother to answer me or clarify anything for my benefit. He just kept on studying my face for that reaction. I guess I must have looked confused.

Eventually, he clapped the comm shut, pocketed it, and turned away.

The town hovered on the horizon for a moment before being swallowed up by some gaping maw. It closed in all around us almost instantly, cutting off the morning light but for a perfectly circular hole in the end. Then that squeezed shut too.

We entered a tunnel. One that sealed off the outside world and sucked out all the atmosphere from around the train to the placid, accented tones of a female voice over the comms. I only paid it half a mind. We picked up speed once we were in vacuum, and the gentle lilting of before vanished. Gravitonic plating activated to compensate, and then there was nothing to let us know we were moving at all. Looking out the front port before it finished closing, though, made me want to vomit.

"What's wrong with him?"

Julian had rounded back on Richter by the time I plopped myself down in one of the revolving control chairs. If I didn't concentrate too hard, I wouldn't feel the subtle sensations of sliding along at subsonic speeds.

The security officer shook his head quickly. "I'm not really, ah ... trained, for this sort of thing," he stammered out, swiping a shaky hand back through his sweaty, blond hair. Julian might not have had a gun pointed at him at the moment, but he still had three to the other man's none, with the pistol resting easy in one hand.

The Eluvian looked the engineer over again. I suppose he looked worse than before. The veins on his arms looked black as they poked out from his papery skin beneath a ripped and bloody shirt. I imagined he'd come running out of the town when that thing attacked, and tried to escape on the train by himself. The crew must have been staying the night while they loaded up.

"You want to, uh, try?" Richter ventured with a tentative look, trying to hand over a portable medscanner. Julian met him with his usual hard-faced glare.

"He's dead, one way or another," was what Julian told him, tracing the air above those blackened veins with a fingertip. "Get rid of him. We should have tossed the body back before we left."

"But he might still be ..."

The other man started to protest, but he stopped at the sight of the pistol clapping down on the engineer's body.

"A-alright."

While they worked on getting that almost-corpse out of the control car, I studied Tess. She didn't notice, slouched over there and staring at the floor. I thought I should say something to her, but the right words wouldn't come to mind. Nothing would, really - all still jumbled about from the past few days and leaving me to wonder when they would finally settle. _If_ they would ever settle. Tess had always been better than me at these sort of thing. I'd always figured she'd weather the outside system better than me when she finally got there. I guess I was wrong. Maybe. But I also didn't think getting attacked, hunted, and killed were supposed to happen this much out here.

All I could really do was wish she'd never come out with us at all. I could wish she'd just stayed safe back home with Bertram instead of chasing off after dad and me.

I thought about that and those thoughts inevitably turned around to her headless body back in the room. I didn't want to think about it ever again, but it came screaming and stabbing at me out of the dark like those things back on the ship. She'd been dead in my arms.

I'd seen it.

I'd _felt_ it.

But now she wasn't, and I couldn't begin to figure out why. I still didn't want to try. I wanted to chase it out as just a delusional nightmare, but I couldn't. Not for long, anyways. Something about it had felt way too real, way too ... fated. Like I could see the path leading up to it and there was no way it could have been any different. Like the threads of time were hovering just out of sight. It couldn't be different. But now it was.

Somehow, her sitting there now didn't feel so real.

As I watched, a funny thing happened, though. The more I focused on that thought - that she wasn't real, or things weren't supposed to be this way - the more I noticed something else.

It was subtle at first. Console lights seeming to flicker out of turn. Hard, metal lines shifting an inch here, then there. The feel of the cabin vibrating - and not in the way it was from shooting through that tunnel. No ... it was like the very fibers of things were trying to stand apart from each other right there in front of me the longer and harder I stared at them.

A hand reached out to pluck at one of those oscillating threads of existence and it took me a minute to realize whose it was. Mine. I pulled back, but not before I noticed how it didn't pop out and tremble like everything else around me just then. It was almost see-through, like it belonged to some kind of ephemeral ghost. And I might have just stared in detached shock and horror at that forever had I not noticed everything else around me suddenly doubling and tripling and quadrupling with ghosts and shades of their own in hundreds and thousands of slightly differing pieces all stacked up on top of each other until anything and everything was buried in a rising cacophony of visual white noise and-

"ESTIMATED ARRIVAL TIME ..."

"FOUR-"

"THIR-"

"FIFTEEN MINUTES AND-"

"FIF-"

"TWEN-"

"FOR-"

"-TY-TWO-"

"-THREE-"

"-NINE-"

"-ONE-"

"SECONDS."

That robotic female voice chimed and thundered with a hundred different numbers and sounds from a thousand different directions. It hit me abruptly like the onset of gravity, and I felt myself hurtled back down into place. Everything settled around me again in an angry, violent rush.

And I did throw up then.


	69. 311 Disorderly Conduct

I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth. Colors, blood, and metal - not the acrid bile from my stomach. That washed away with the pungent swirl of material and immaterial things from all around me. I wasn't sure if it was taste at all ... but it was something more than seeing, hearing, or just feeling. It _felt_ like tasting.

Tess was helping me up sometime later.

"You're gonna be okay. You're gonna be okay," she kept repeating in my ear like some kind of traumatized mantra. I think it was far more for her benefit than mine, which left me wondering how bad I looked to frighten her out of that stupor she'd been in.

Julian appeared in the control car door with Richter at gunpoint ahead of him, barely wavering and shimmering like ethereal ghosts. They were almost real and tangible again like before. More real than I could hope anything for anyways, just then. The Eluvian man looked like he'd come running, with rifle ready and poised like he'd expected some kind of attack. Richter just look flustered and nervous. Julian shoved him inside before sweeping the tiny cabin like some Dreggoran commando from some vid. When he was satisfied, he settled on us.

"What happened?"

"I don't know - she just ... just fell over!" Tess cried back at him.

She must have yelled, and I must have hit the deck. I still wasn't sure just what had happened myself, but my head only felt like it was swimming a little less than it was before. And it hurt from where I must have smacked the metal plating.

"Tram sickness," Julian started to say as he got down in front of me, slinging his rifle again. I was still hovering precariously above the deck and he had to snatch my chin with one of his rough, old gloves to get me to look at him. And maybe he wasn't so sure about what had happened when he finally did, because he frowned at what he saw there.

"_What_?" Tess grabbed at his arm angrily when he didn't bother to say anything else.

He glanced at her, briefly. Then back at me. He was staring at my eyes, and I got a good, sickeningly thorough look at his while I tried to swallow back bile and shivering parallels. I don't think I'd ever seen him so put off since we'd met him.

I think that scared me more than the actual thing. Cold fear crept in where a muted panic had tried to seize me before, and I had a hard time not letting my stomach burst again. Julian just let go and stood straight up. He gave each of us another quick look.

"_What_?" Tess demanded again, her voice cracking.

Julian turned away, though - _something_ swimming around inside his head. He didn't say anything more for a while.

I started to feel a little bit better after a couple more minutes, but I wasn't even sure if the whole episode was something that could pass by the time Tess started helping me back into a seat. Maybe I'd be stuck seeing between those lines of reality forever. Maybe. I tried not to think about it because it only made the urge to throw up ten times worse.

With nothing but the hum of the train as it sped along, things got quiet and awkward inside the cabin after that. I think that security officer felt the most so; he blended back into the background of the consoles and swiped at his sweaty brow. He'd gotten out of that town alive, which was a lot more than most of the people back there could say. Not that they could say anything anymore. But there was no guarantee that Julian would let him make it all the way to wherever we were going alive. He didn't have a good track record with anyone other than Tess and me.

"How many will they send to check the cargo when we get to port?"

I guess the two men had been thinking the same thing as me. Richter jumped at that sudden question from the Eluvian when he realized it was directed at him.

"Wh-what?" he managed, and swallowed thickly.

"How many?" Julian repeated. "And how well armed?"

The security officer just seemed confused by that. His mouth bobbed up and down a few times before Julian shifted the pistol back into his hand. That settled the other man, and he swallowed one more time.

"Eishaffen, you m-mean?" he stammered out, not quite meeting Julian's eyes. "I don't know - a foreman comes down and usually goes over the manifest with Frieder." His accent hadn't been as bad as most of the men back at the bar, but it got worse the more unnerved he got.

"Security?"

"You mean, uh, aside from us?" He shook his head. "I guess a couple guys ... just 'cause the public terminals can get a bit rough some days." He hesitated. "Why?"

"How long until we get there?" Julian pointed his pistol at the console behind the other man. Richter frowned, but caught his meaning. There must have been a readout on our status he could pull up because he turned around to take a look at it.

"I guess, ahhh ..."

He never got a chance to finish, though. Julian closed the space between them in the car before anyone knew what was happening, and cracked him over the skull hard enough to knock him out. Then he slumped down into the panel.


	70. Author's Note

Due to the content being less fan fiction and more original story, all updates will be solely posted at (add /s/3106801/1/Arclight to the root url to access it, this site won't allow a URL in Docs).

If you have trouble finding it, look for stories by John Mercer, under Science Fiction, or PM me.


End file.
